General Skepticism

April 22, 2010

Suppose someone is rolling a set of two dice. He rolls a double six – something with a one in 36 chance of happening. Which is more likely, that the person rolled a set of regular dice and just got lucky, or that he rolled a special set where both dice have just sixes on all faces? (Let’s assume you can’t see any but the sides that are on the top.) You might think that since a regular set would produce a double six in only one out of 36 attempts, he is more likely to have rolled the trick dice with just sixes. But after a moment’s thought you would probably realize that was wrong. With just one roll of the dice, you would have no way of knowing. The person might have been rolling the dice all day, and you just happened to come along at the exact time that he rolled the double six. Of course, you could stay and see if he rolled the dice again, and if he kept getting double sixes then you would suspect there was something fishy going on. But with just one roll, there is no way you could tell. You wouldn’t have enough information.

The same would be true if the guy rolled three dice and got three sixes, or four dice and got four sixes, or five dice… etc etc. If he only called you over to look when he’d got all sixes, you wouldn’t know if his roll had been especially lucky, or if he had spent hours rolling other combinations, and only called you to look when the result was all sixes. No matter how many dice he rolled at once, or how high the apparent odds against it happening by chance, you wouldn’t know he was cheating just by looking at the result of one roll. You also wouldn’t know how many other people are rolling dice at the same time, but who are keeping quiet about it because they rolled uninteresting combinations. At the very least, you would need to see a few consecutive rolls from this one guy before you could form any conclusions.

It seems to me that fine tuning arguments are similar to the dice rolling guy. The fine tuning argument is this: the odds of “rolling the dice” to get, by chance, a universe where life can exist, are so low that the universe must have been designed. But the objections to this are the same as with the dice rolling guy: unless we know how many universes there are, and how many big bangs there have been, we can’t know if our particular universe is very unlikely to have occurred by chance or not. There might be millions of universes. And if there are a very large number of universes, then the odds of getting one tuned for life, are very good. And in that case, there are good odds that in at least one of the universes tuned for life, there evolved intelligent people like us who remark that this universe looks fine tuned for life.

Now, you may say, we don’t have proof that additional universes exist, or that there have been several big bangs. And I say that’s not my problem, it’s the problem of those making the fine tuning argument. If fine tuners are claiming that the odds of getting a universe suitable for life are extremely low, then it’s up to them to show that this is the only universe that exists or has ever existed. Their calculations that show the incredibly low probabilities of a universe suitable for life, assume there is and has only ever been one universe. Why is this? Because to get the probability of getting any universe tuned for life, they have to multiply their probability of getting one universe tuned for life by the total number of universes. They never do this – which means they are implicitly multiplying by one universe. So, before we accept their claim, they first have to demonstrate that there really is only one universe. It’s their claim, remember? They have to justify all parts of it, not just the bits they like. So as part of their own calculation, they must demonstrate that there is only one universe. As far as I know, no one has ever done this.

I have heard some say that multiple universes violate Occam’s Razor – one universe is “simpler,” they say. But this argument misinterprets Occam’s Razor. Occam’s Razor doesn’t say choose the simplest – if it did then “Goddidit” would be the answer to anything, because Goddidit is simple. Occam’s Razor actually says don’t make up unnecessary assumptions. We know that universes exist because we live in one. Unless there is a solid reason to think that there are no other universes apart from the one we see, it would be an additional assumption to insist without evidence that this is the only one. To be most generous to fine tuners, the best they can claim is that the assumption of many universes is an equal assumption to the claim that there can only be one, and so Occam’s Razor is a wash – you can’t use it to choose one way or the other. The burden of proof is therefore still upon the ones making the fine tuning claim.

Of course, we don’t need multiple universes to reject fine tuning arguments. We don’t actually know enough to be able to calculate meaningful probabilities of getting, by chance, the so-called fine tuned constants of this universe. We can only examine one universe, and can’t really say for sure what would happen if the conditions were different. Fine tuning arguments are really just god of the gaps arguments – we don’t know why the constants look fine tuned, so we’re going to use god to explain the gap in our knowledge. Never a very productive way of trying to learn the truth about anything. Also, we don’t know what kind of life would have evolved if the universe was very different from this one. Life as we know it might not exist, but that wouldn’t mean that completely different life forms couldn’t evolve. Again fine tuning arguments say more about the lack of imagination in the people making the arguments than about the truth of the conclusions they are claiming.

But even if we ignore these flaws, the burden of proof is still with the fine tuners to demonstrate that this is the only universe that exists or has even existed (or at least, that there is only a small number). Until they do this, fine tuners are like the person pointing to the guy who just told you he rolled several dice and got all sixes, while failing to investigate all the other people in the world and throughout history, who have rolled dice but didn’t tell you the results.

Additional Reading

Physicist Victor Stenger has many other arguments against fine tuning, including simulated universes with very different values for the so-called “fine tuning” constants. He also states that multiverses are suggested by modern cosmological models.

January 23, 2010

For once we have some news of rationality winning – although it took a while. Jim McCormick (pictured right), maker of the useless ADE-651 “bomb detection” device, was arrested yesterday in the UK on suspicion of “fraud by misrepresentation.” An export ban on the device will come into force next week. To which I add – about time!

It’s not as if this is new information. The ADE-651 is just the latest incarnation of a device that was previously called “The Mole,” and before that the “Quadro Tracker.” They’re all the exact same device and they have all consistently failed tests designed to see if they work. Back in October 2008 and again in November 2009, James Randi challenged the makers of the ADE-651 to apply for his million dollar prize to prove that it worked. Of course, as with all the other charlatans and quacks Randi challenges, they didn’t apply. Well, now we know why – the makers were selling these pieces of junk to the Iraqi government for $40,000 a pop ora total to date of $85 million! By my count, that’s over 2,000 not bomb detectors not detecting bombs in Iraq alone. Randi’s $ million must have seemed like small change. (I have to admit I am still a bit skeptical about this $85 million figure.
It is the figure that is consistently being reported by all media,
although they are probably just repeating each other, so we can’t be
sure. Still, we have nothing else to go on right now. If it is confirmed it is
certainly a massive fraud for such a piece of junk.)

The BBC reports that there are concerns that the devices have failed to stop bomb attacks that have killed hundreds of people. Actually, a little more than just “concerns.” There have been several successful bomb attacks in Iraq recently in areas where they were apparently relying on this bogus device:

And an attack in December killed over 120 people, prompting Iraqis to ask how the bombs could have got through the city's security.

Attention is increasingly focusing on the ADE-651, the hand-held detector now used at most checkpoints in Baghdad. [My bold.]

Get that? This useless device is used at most checkpoints in Baghdad in place of physical inspections of vehicles. Remember, this is a device that has no memory, no programming, no working electronics, no batteries and no known way it could possibly ever work. It has consistently failed to work in all controlled tests. And yet they go for $40,000 each! Over 2,000 of them.

Strangely, I find I do agree with one thing McCormick has to say about his product:

"the theory behind dowsing and the theory behind how we actually detect explosives is very similar".

Yes, dowsing and the ADE-651 are similar in that they are both complete bullshit.

Randi’s blog today has a post, Randi Responds to the Arrest of James McCormick, that includes a video of Randi explaining the history of this device and the JREF’s role in exposing it. (Although I don’t often recommend long video clips, this one with Randi is worth the time.) Astonishingly, the Quadro Tracker (which, to repeat, is the exact same product as the ADE-651) was tested back in 1995 and was described back then by the FBI as “a fraud.” Fifteen years later, McCormick gets arrested.

The Iraqi officer who appeared at a press conference with McCormick recently, Major General Jehad al-Jabiri, apparently said he did not care about the failed tests of this device. I join Randi in hoping the Iraqis investigate this Iraqi officer’s connection to the manufacturers of the device. Apparently it has been sold for $16,500 (still a rip off for something that does nothing), although it was sold to the Iraqi military for up to $60,000. Would the Major General’s bank accounts reveal kickbacks received from McCormick’s company? There would have been enough spare cash from that $85 million to pay off any number of intermediaries. Perhaps the threat of jail time (Iraqi jail – nice) would motivate the Major General finally to care if the damn thing works or not. One can only hope.

Praise should go to the JREF for doggedly exposing this fraud for at least the past 15 years, according to Randi. (Shame on the media and law enforcement for allowing it to continue, without criticism, for so long.) Don’t forget all the other frauds and charlatans who also refuse to take Randi’s $ million test because they know they would fail. (And ditto.)

December 29, 2009

Deepak Chopra has a surprisingly antagonistic article up (at the usual place) entitled Woo Woo Is a Step Ahead of (Bad) Science. In it he calls out Michael Shermer for… well take a look. Chopra is referring to a recent Larry King Live show where the two clashed:

Afterwards, however, I had an unpredictable reaction. I realized that I would much rather expound woo woo than the kind of bad science Shermer stands behind. He has made skepticism his personal brand, more or less, sitting by the side of the road to denigrate "those people who believe in spirituality, ghosts, and so on," as he says on a YouTube video. No matter that this broad brush would tar not just the Pope, Mahatma Gandhi, St. Teresa of Avila, Buddha, and countless scientists who happen to recognize a reality that transcends space and time. All are deemed irrational by the skeptical crowd. You would think that skeptics as a class have made significant contributions to science or the quality of life in their own right. Uh oh. No, they haven't. Their principal job is to reinforce the great ideas of yesterday while suppressing the great ideas of tomorrow.

At least he admits he expounds woo – by definition, extraordinary beliefs for which there is insufficient extraordinary evidence. He also claims Shermer stands behind bad science, except he gives no evidence that Shermer supports bad science. (In reality, he just doesn’t support Chopra’s pseudoscience.) Chopra follows with a lame appeal to authority (the Pope, Mahatma Gandhi, St. Teresa of Avila, Buddha, etc), and the claim that skeptics, by rejecting false ideas, are somehow suppressing great ideas. Seriously. Chopra’s grasp of logic clearly hasn’t improved any.

For we have reached the state where Shermer's tired, out-of-date, utterly mediocre science is far in arrears of the best, most open scientific thinkers -- actually, we reached that point 60 years ago when eminent physicists like Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger applied quantum theory to deep spiritual questions. The arrogance of skeptics is both high-handed and rusty. It is high-handed because they lump brilliant speculative thinkers into one black box known as woo woo. It is rusty because Shermer doesn't even bother to keep up with the latest findings in neuroscience, medicine, genetics, physics, and evolutionary biology. All of these fields have opened fascinating new ground for speculation and imagination.

[My Bold.]

Yes – speculation. Chopra gets close, but then misses completely. Speculation is great for forming hypotheses to test. Chopra, though, treats these speculations as though they were already successfully tested and were now proven facts. They’re not.

Skeptics feel that they have won the high ground in matters concerning consciousness, mind, the origins of life, evolutionary theory, and brain science. This is far from the case. What they cling to is 19th Century materialism, packaged with a screeching hysteria about God and religion that is so passé it has become quaint. To suggest that Darwinian theory is incomplete and full of unproven hypotheses causes Shermer, who takes Darwin as purely as a fundamentalist takes scripture, to see God everywhere in the enemy camp.

I don’t think that any evolutionary scientist would argue that the the theory of evolution is complete – if it were, there would be no need for anyone do do evolutionary science any more because we'd already know everything. (So that’s a straw man, for those who are counting.) But “full of unproven hypotheses”? Really? “Full” of them? If there are so many, why doesn’t Chopra list a couple? Talk about “screeching hysteria.”

Anyway, this shrill screed made me want to see what he was talking about – so I looked up the transcript of the Larry King show in question (which also included Dinesh D’Souza – so you know it’s going to be good. And by “good,” you know I mean “bad”). Here are some examples:

CHOPRA: First of all, there's a lot of interesting science now that is suggesting -- and by no means is this clear. There's a lot of controversy of -- about this. There's a lot of interesting science that our consciousness, which is the place where we perceive, think, emote, imagine, have insight, intuition, choice-making -- that this part of us is not a product of our brain.

Chopra admits the science just “suggests” this, and that the evidence “by no means is this clear.” You wouldn’t believe this though from what follows, or from his HuffPo article. Note how all the “not clear” and only “suggesting” references disappear in what follows:

Yes. The -- the -- the mind, that consciousness, the one I'm talking to right now is not a product of the brain, but is localizing itself through the brain, just like people who are seeing us right now on their screens, you know, we're not in their television boxes. We are coming through these airwaves and they are perceiving us. But if they open the box, they wouldn't find Deepak or Jeff or anyone there.

So if I look inside you, I won't find your soul because it's not there. In fact, your body is experienced in your consciousness. Your mind is experienced in your consciousness. And the evidence is pointing out that this consciousness is non-local, which means it exists outside of space-time and therefore, mathematically, it's impossible to destroy this consciousness.

Typical Chopra bait and switch. The doubt from the bait section is gone, and the switch is in to “…is not a product of the brain.” No doubts, no suggestions, no unclearedness – the mind just isn’t a product of the brain any more. Period. It is now also “impossible” to destroy consciousness. Note – impossible. No doubt any more, no mere “suggesting.” And it must be so because Chopra tells us it is. Even though (also according to Chopra) the science is by no means this clear and is only suggesting of these things.

Also note another favorite argument of the woo – argument by analogy. I’ve heard this analogy to the TV set before – our brain is like the TV set but our mind is somewhere else (by analogy, the TV signal). But the analogy fails. In fact, it’s more than that, if anything the analogy demonstrates the mind is not like the TV signal. We know that if you damage part of the brain, the functions associated with the damaged sections of the brain will be reduced or disappear altogether. This is not like a TV at all. If you damage part of your TV set you won’t find that you now only get the commercials but not the programs, or that you get game shows but not documentaries. That would be a true analog of what happens when the brain is damaged. No. If you damage your TV set, either it still works (you didn’t damage anything significant) or it stops working altogether. (For the most part, anyway.) And if you disrupt the signal, by disconnecting the cable box, or by shielding the aerial, again the TV again stops working completely. You don’t find that you now get the programs but the remote doesn’t work any more.

Chopra follows this with an old chestnut you will recognize if you have ever tried to debate idealists or dualists:

But if I ask you to imagine the color red or look at the color red, there's no red in your brain. There's just electrical firings.

True but irrelevant. Yes, your brain interprets certain visible light wavelengths as “red” and yes I don’t know if what you see as “red” is what I see as “red.” But show me a red card and (in a separate room) show Chopra a red card and we’ll both say it’s “red” (assuming neither of us is color blind), and we’ll do that because there is a real external phenomenon in the physical world that our brains see and interpret as “red”; it doesn’t mean there is a non-material mind signaling the brain.

Well, I have to say of Michael that he is very superstitious. He's addicted to the superstition of materialism. The first thing he said about the brain, you know, that you destroy a certain part of the brain and that function will not come back -- he hasn't kept up with the literature. There's a whole phenomenon called neural plasticity. There's gene regulation.

Chopra massively overreaches. Yes, neural plasticity means the brain can re-wire itself, given time, to perform some of the functions it lost when it was damaged. But it takes time, and while it’s doing so the brain doesn’t have the functions it lost. This is not evidence for a non-material mind; it is evidence that the physical brain can eventually repair itself to some limited extent. I’m not sure what gene regulation has to do with this, but that also has a material explanation and doesn’t require a non-material mind to function. As Steven Novella wrote:

…all the evidence we have suggests that the mind is a product of the brain. There is no mind without the brain (despite the unsubstantiated claims of paranormalists). If the brain is not biologically active, there is no consciousness. If the brain is damaged, the mind is altered. As brain function changes through drugs, lack of sleep, fever, or some metabolic derangement – so changes the mind. No reliable observation or experiment has been able to separate the mind as a phenomenon from the brain.

Throughout this whole thing, Chopra keeps asking Shermer what he clearly thinks is a killer question:

CHOPRA: ...are we talking to you, Michael, or to your networks right now?

CHOPRA: OK. When you said you'd like to believe in an after- death, was that your synaptic network speaking or was it you?

CHOPRA: OK. So what -- you know, when you say I'm skeptical about this, who's the "I" that's skeptical?

CHOPRA: I know it doesn't work for you. Who's the you that's talking to me right now?

CHOPRA: You are saying that's the way our synaptic networks should -- who's you?

I could ask Chopra the same question, and Chopra wouldn’t know the answer either. Although that wouldn’t stop him making one up. Of course, the sensible answer is that as far as we know, the “I” that we all feel we are is an emergent property of the neurons firing in our extremely complex brains. Or as Steven Novella wrote:

I would describe the subjective sense of self, of existence, as the real-time processing of the brain that is constantly taking in external stimuli while engaging in an internal conversation – generating thoughts and feelings and comparing those processes to memory and sensory input. We know that in order to be awake the brain needs to be constantly activated (a process of the brainstem activating system), which suggests that this constant brain activity is necessary for consciousness, probably because it is consciousness.

Admittedly, Chopra’s brain might not be complex enough to accomplish that task, but that’s no reason to suppose the rest of us need a non-material mind to get the same feeling.

The host (who despite the name of the show, was not Larry King) asked one sensible question (although he also tried to answer it himself in a less sensible way):

PROBST: Why not believe?

Why -- why are you focusing so much -- because if you're wrong...

The answer is, that we should reject ideas that are wrong, because it is only by rejecting ideas that are wrong that correct ideas will flourish. I was reminded here of the words of Antony Hoare (senior researcher at Microsoft Corporation), who explained what he though was the one thing everyone should learn about science:

…scientists start by trying very hard to disprove what they hope is true. When they fail, they have a good reason for believing what they hope is true, and can even convince others of its truth.

Do you imagine that Chopra has ever tried (very hard or even not so hard) to prove that the mind is not a separate entity from the brain? Would he even consider doing that? He gave us the TV set analogy – the brain is like the TV set but the mind is like the signal. Do you think he has ever thought of testing this to see if he could prove it false – by shutting off the signal (analogous to disconnecting the cable box) or disrupting it (by analogy, putting the TV aerial inside a Faraday cage), to see if the brain stops providing consciousness when the signal from the mind is disrupted? Has he even thought of doing this? You know the answer – of course he hasn’t. He never would. He isn’t interested in trying to prove his pet theory wrong; he’s only interested in posturing on the Larry King Show and on the pages of the Huffington Post.

Chopra called for a formal debate with Shermer, a debate he claims Shermer has avoided. Funny, I seem to remember they already had a debate, and that Chopra’s arguments were the usual weak logical fallacies that he always trots out. (Click that link and you’ll see that Chopra’s arguments haven’t improved any.) Should Shermer agree to debate him? Well, that’s up to Shermer, but science isn’t decided by debates, even among scientists (which Chopra isn't), and we know from debating creationists that the woo side has the advantage in that they don’t have to restrict themselves to facts, good scientific evidence or valid logic. Still, if he does, Chopra’s side of the debate is sure to give me material for some more blog posts.

December 05, 2009

Several people have emailed me to ask if I’m still here, if I’ve given up blogging, or what. Of course, I’m touched that you all noticed. The truth is, I’ve just been having trouble recently finding the motivation to write anything new. I seem to have covered all the major topics I wanted to cover when I started this blog, plus many more (What The Bleep!? / The Secret) that I never even envisioned back in February 2005. And now, when I see some more nonsense by, say, Bill Maher or Deepak Chopra, it looks like the same old crap I’ve debunked before, and that others (I’m looking at you Orac) have already done an excellent job of taking down already. So I decided to take a break for a while. I’ve not gone away (as you can tell from the comments) and in fact I do have another brief post planned on astrology, as well as year 2 of The Golden Woos to consider. But it is true that I won’t be posting as often as before, at least for a while.

I’ve also been reading a lot of blogs. For example, TechSkeptic just posted the latest Skeptics’ Circle. Here are a couple of others I found interesting recently – some of which you have probably read but a couple perhaps you haven’t.

First, check out Whirled Musings on the sweat lodge deaths at James Arthur Ray’s Sedona retreat: Sweat lodge deaths: is the heat on Secret star? I’ve had differences with Whirled Musings’ Connie before, but I have to say that few are more persistent than she in debunking New Wage cults such as The Secret and its fellow travelers. This post is very long, with many additions as new information came in, but it is really worth a read. A couple of snippets:

While investigators are still sorting out all of the factors that led to the deaths of two participants [now three; see Oct. 18 addendum below ~CLS], and the injuries of numerous others, at James Ray's recent Sedona disaster, it seems abundantly clear by now (at least to me) that the very nature of the retreat – and the manipulative techniques James Ray used – were factors in those deaths and injuries. Numerous accounts I have read said that even though participants were told they could leave whenever they wanted, those who recognized their limitations and tried to exit the sweat lodge were, in some cases, chided by James (he called one guy a "wimp") and they were encouraged to stay and experience the event "full-on."

People are flailing in seizures; others are vomiting violently, or foaming at the mouth. Bodies are lined up unconscious, some are blue from lack of oxygen, but for some it is too late, they are already dead. Survivors that are barely able to stand struggle to help the others, they have had almost no food or water for nearly three days, even longer without sleep. It looks like a war zone, but for the incongruent figure of James Arthur Ray (a contributing author to The Secret) who exits the sweat lodge and stands tall with a big smile, the only one able to stand on his own volition. He is not concerned with the medical emergency going on full swing around him. He is not worried about the health and well-being of his followers who have paid $10,000.00 (tack on an additional 5,000.00 or so if you include flights, room and board, and camping supplies) to attend his retreat. In fact, he and his team urge people to stop taking care of others and focus on their own journey, assuring them they are fine and only “purging”. Someone finally realizes James Ray is not in control of the situation and calls 911.

A new blog about genetic engineering that I have been reading is Biofortified. There is certainly a lot of nonsense talked about genetic engineering, but the writers of Biofortified are refreshingly evidence based. Check out Terminator 2: My Mission is to Protect You – on the subject of “terminator” technology and why it is not the evil bogeyman that the anti-GE people like to claim it is. In fact, although terminator technology is not actually in any commercially available GE crops, it is a part of some non GE crops including some organics:

There is a very widely used and accepted conventional analog of Terminator GURTs that most of us have eaten – they’re called Seedless Watermelons. These are generated by manipulating the number of chromosomes in watermelon cells to give them three copies of each chromosome instead of two. (For more on how this works, you can watch a video I made about it here.) The resulting “Triploid” Watermelons sponteneously abort their seeds, leaving a juicy, seedless fruit. The seeds have to be regenerated year after year from other plants, and farmers and consumers obviously cannot replant seeds that don’t even exist!

Ironically, while genetic engineering is not allowed in organic agriculture, Seedless watermelons are. Nevermind the fact that the chromosome numbers are artificially manipulated using chemicals – it appears that this early form of direct genetic manipulation has been grandfathered in.

My point in bringing up the seedless watermelon is this: It results in exactly the same thing as genetically engineered GURTs – and that is it effectively prevents the plant from generating fertile seeds. The argument is often made, most vociferously by Shiva, that GURTs are immoral because they interrupt the traditional practice of seed saving. Shiva and others must therefore agree that seedless watermelons are also immoral for the same reason. Why is there no call for a moratorium on seedless watermelons? Well, that would be the pits.

Keeping with the GE theme, Scienceblogs recently added Tomorrow’s Table, written by Pamela Ronald, Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis.

In addition, my audience is bright, they wouldn't refuse a flu shot because they heard me talk about it…

Oh no – the Oprah defense: I may be talking crap or I may not – it doesn’t matter because my readers will decide. Come on Bill. Man up – either engage your critics with evidence and facts or shut the hell up, but quit hiding behind the skirts of your readers with this lame argument.

According to Armstrong, he was forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos, and reading several blog posts on conspiracy theorist Ralph Coleman's website, OmissionControl.org.

"It only took a few hastily written paragraphs published by this passionate denier of mankind's so-called 'greatest technological achievement' for me to realize I had been living a lie, " said a visibly emotional Armstrong, addressing reporters at his home. "It has become painfully clear to me that on July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module under the control of my crew did not in fact travel 250,000 miles over eight days, touch down on the moon, and perform various experiments, ushering in a new era for humanity. Instead, the entire thing was filmed on a soundstage, most likely in New Mexico."

"This is the only logical interpretation of the numerous inconsistencies in the grainy, 40-year-old footage," Armstrong added.

June 11, 2009

Several bloggers have commented on this article by Tom Stern about Ken Ham’s creation museum published in The Point magazine. While Stern’s article was generally OK in its presentation of Ham’s museum as pseudoscience unsupported by facts, he spoils the ending with a false conflation of science with religion. And although he claims he isn’t doing this (“Of course science isn’t a faith: it builds bridges…” etc), he really is and in a most intellectually lazy way. This is what you find towards the end of the article:

I was taught the earth is four billion years old and, going around the Museum, I realized I don’t actually know how “they” know that.

This isn’t the tired retort, often aimed at Dawkins et al., that science is just another faith. Of course science isn’t a faith: it builds bridges, it puts Americans on the moon and finds extraordinary new ways for us to kill each other. But it has more in common with faith than either the religious or scientific community would like us to admit. For Nietzsche, this was particularly evident in the consideration of scientific methods: there’s something comforting about the repetitive rituals of the scientific and technical life, which mimics the priestly cure of the Hail Mary or morning prayer. And there’s something silencing, too, about the way facts are presented to the public—as fossilized nuggets of information not to be questioned. Where once we used to turn to the priest for advice and guidance, now we turn to the scientific expert; we bend to the stamp of his authority, his status, his style—compare the expert witness in the courtroom to the priest at the hanging.

So science isn’t faith, but Stern doesn’t know how we know the age of the Earth and Nietzsche wrote something about the rituals of science being like religion, and so science really is like faith, except it isn’t. I find it telling that Stern finds the the time to mention Nietzsche seven (count them) times (why?) but apparently doesn’t have ten seconds to put earth is four billion years old into Google and find out how we know the age of the Earth. (If he had, he would have soon found this nice explanation of Isochron Dating.)

So what if there is “something comforting” about the rituals of science? Many secular activities include comforting things. The rituals of baseball are comforting to fans, the ritual of cooking a meal for friends can be comforting, the rituals associated with Star Trek fandom can be comforting to trekkies… you get the idea. But that doesn’t make these things religions. Or if it does it uses a definition of religion that is so wide as to be virtually meaningless. If everything is like religion, then nothing is. In reality, the “rituals” of science (which are not “rituals”, but procedures), since they are performed for a reason, are further from religion than the rituals of baseball etc. And frankly, I imagine many of the detailed procedures necessary for many science experiments are more tedious than comforting, anyway. So Stern is wrong here in at least two different ways.

This idea that science has religious-like “rituals”, scientists are “priests”, or “men of the white cloth” (lab coats), science journals are “holy scriptures” etc etc is something I have heard a lot of recently. It’s old, tired drivel. Science can be questioned. And, amazingly, this applies even to subjects that Tom Stern does not fully comprehend. Science is questioned by both scientists and non scientists. Only, unlike with religion, there is a basis for questioning and determining what scientific theories we accept and what we don't – the evidence. What do they use in religion to determine what to accept? Well, nothing really, other than what some authority just happens to think. They have no externally verifiable basis for determining what is true and what isn’t. By comparing scientists to priests, Stern is just lazily looking at the surface – what might appear to be happening – without delving any deeper. Then it occurred to me this is just cargo cult religion.

In 1974 Richard Feynman gave a lecture at Caltech where he described what he called cargo cult science - work that has the semblance of being scientific, but is missing the things necessary for real science:

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land. [My bold.]

It struck me that referring to scientists as “priests”, or science journals as “holy books” is cargo cult religion. Stern is examining scientific things that look similar to religion and using this to conflate the two. But this conflation of science and religion is cargo cult religion the same way as pseudoscience is cargo cult science. It may have the semblance of religion, but is missing the things necessary for real religion. (Thankfully.) Although science may have the appearance of some aspects of religion, it is different in all the ways that actually matter.

Of course, in an ideal world we should not just accept everything scientists tell us, but should examine their arguments to see if they are valid. But not everyone has the time or the inclination to do this with every claim they hear. Stern himself is proof of this. And even scientists cannot be experts in fields that are not their own. But just because each one of us hasn’t personally performed every scientific experiment ever performed in the history of the world, that doesn’t mean our acceptance of scientific knowledge is like religion. We trust what science tells us because science has a track record of being right more often than any other method of inquiry. But trust is not faith, and trusting experts in areas where we are not experts, is not religion.

Few if any of the similarities between science and religion are interesting or useful. On the other hand, the differences between science and religion are profound. Stern spoiled what could have been a reasonable expose of Ken Ham’s silly museum by dragging out this discredited canard once again.

April 01, 2009

Randi published his 2008 Pigasus Awards today, and I must say, some of them had me scratching my head a bit. Here are the awards and the winners – see what you think:

1. To the Scientist who said or did the silliest thing relating to parapsychology in the preceding twelve months.

- Dr. Colin Ross, who can shoot electromagnetic radiation from his eyes

Hum, well OK, I guess he qualifies. What he’s claiming is very silly. I’m not sure if it’s strictly “parapsychology”, but he apparently is a scientist and seems like a nut.

I’m afraid the rest are not so good, though.

2. To the Funding Organization that supports the most useless parapsychological study during the year.

- The Producers of the movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Huh? The movie Expelled could not any way be called a “study”. It was a film pushing creationism. Certainly not a study and nothing “parapsychological” about it either. Plus, the producers of Expelled are not a “funding organization”. It was certainly a piece of crap, but a “parapsychological study”? No. And yet there were several actual parapsychological studies he could have picked from 2008. For example, this one. So why didn’t he?

3. To the Media outlet that reported as fact the most outrageous paranormal claim.

- Late night cable TV stations

This seems a bit of a cop out to me. If Randi wants to shame the makers of Enzyte then OK, but then he's criticizing phony advertising and not a media outlet per se. They hardly even seem that outrageous either. Unlike (for example) this.

The next one makes no sense at all:

4. To the "Psychic" performer who fools the greatest number of people with the least effort in that twelve-month period.

- Jenny McCarthy; who has written books and appeared on countless TV shows promoting measles

Jenny McCarthy is certainly a bubble head anti-science moron who deserves to be shamed more than just about anyone else I can think of, but “psychic”? When did she ever claim to be psychic? And there are plenty of real (ie pretend) psychics out there who could have been named. McCarthy could perhaps have been named in the next award - the most persistent refusal to face reality – that she certainly would qualify for. But psychic? It just makes no sense. Couldn’t Randi think of one actual pretend psychic to shame? Not one? In the whole year?

5. For the most persistent refusal to face reality.

- Kevin Trudeau; who sold quack books even after the government fined him for it

Actually, I think Trudeau has a pretty good grip on reality. He knows he’s selling crap, and he knows exactly how to keep making money at it despite numerous attempts to shut him down. No, the people with the most persistent refusal to face reality are the ones who continue to buy Trudeau’s books and videos, despite the fact that they are complete crap. But certainly not Trudeau himself. Douchebag? Yes. Refusal to face reality? Not really.

I hate to say this, but I think this years Pigasus’s are a fail. The purpose if these awards, I imagine, is to ridicule these bozos and have a laugh at them ourselves. But that only works if the things the awards are for, are for things the person actually did. If they are about a straw man version (eg Jenny McCarthy – psychic), then they fall flat. In fact, the recipient could easily laugh back at these rather absurd categorizations. I’m afraid this list just looks like Randi picked five people who had done stupid things in the year, and then randomly assigned them to one of his five categories. Which doesn’t seem to make much sense.

Well Randi edited some of the category descriptions - the main one being to remove the "psychic" label from the Jenny McCarthy award (see Phil Plait's comment below). That's certainly an improvement. But I still think it doesn't make any sense to call McCarthy a "performer", and I still think none of the awards (apart from #1) fit the category descriptions. Admittedly it's not a major issue in the grand scheme of things, but if a thing's worth doing it's worth doing right.

Unfortunately the image is almost certainly an artifact of the mapping process. The underwater images for Google’s ocean maps come from multiple sonar measurements of the ocean floor. (Unlike Google Earth which relies on satellite imagery to show the surface only.) The area in question was mapped by boats travelling in a series of straight lines, and the “grid” merely shows the route taken by those mapping boats. A spokeswoman for Google has been quoted in numerous places:

…what users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process.

Bathymetric (sea-floor) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea-floor.

'The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data.

But even without this information, it seems extremely unlikely this was ever an underwater city. A city the “size of Wales”? From this map of Wales you can see that would be approximately 130 by 70 miles in size - some city. And using a ruler to make some rough calculations, those roads would be at least a couple of miles wide. They must have been expecting some pretty heavy traffic over ten thousand years ago!

February 03, 2009

Skeptico is four years old today. Yes, I’ve been writing this blog for four years now. In previous years, I’ve marked the occasion with examples of how the people we met during the year might answer the age old chicken / road question. Here are those previous years’ versions:

Some serious woo in those first three years. I wondered whether to continue with the tradition this year, wondered if it wasn’t getting a little tired, or if there was enough material. But then I read through some of the year’s posts and I decided that yes, there really was enough woo again this year for more chicken/road answers (including a late entry by Michael Egnor). And yet again, Deepak Chopra makes an appearance – the only person to be featured in all four years’ chicken/road celebrations. Choprawoo – the woo that truly keeps on giving. And the actual reason I started this blog and wrote my first post in 2005.

Now you’re all up to date, with no further ado, here are the chicken abusers we met last year.

I’m serving you with a subpoena demanding all documents (including financial records) related to the chicken’s crossing of the road, all communications with anyone connected to the crossing roads issue, and all communications with anyone who blogs about poultry and/or pedestrian-highway access.

Were ‘time’ to physically exist, then, a simple experiment would have long ago proven it. That experiment would consist of two chickens. One of the two chickens would cross the road, while the other would wait on this side. Were ‘time’ to exist, then the two chickens, a few feet apart (one this side, and one on the “other side” of the road) would be affected at a similar rate by the surrounding-them same speed of ‘time’. As ‘time’ does not exist, but the physical process of change does, the first chicken that has “crossed the road” is on “the other side”, while the chicken that has not crossed would remain on this side indefinitely, for as long as that chicken does not cross the road.

Genetically engineered chickens, crossing roads, are causing the biggest-ever traffic disaster. I know because I’ve been to the Punjab. And western Australia. I have been there. Seen it. Roads full of chickens.

December 30, 2008

A wireless internet network in the UK is being blamed for all sorts of illnesses, from headaches to pneumonia, according to the Telegraph newspaper:

…the residents of Glastonbury, which has long been a favoured destination for pilgrims, are at the centre of a bitter row in which many blame the town's new wireless computer network - known as wi-fi - for a spate of health problems.

Some healers even hold that electro-magnetic fields (EMFs) generated by the wi-fi system are responsible for upsetting positive energy fields of the body, which are known as chakras, and positive energy fields of the earth, which are known as ley lines.

Oh noes! Wi-Fi is messing up “ley lines” and “chakras” – things that are entirely imaginary! And how do they know? Because “some healers” think so. But wait, it’s not just the healers:

Meanwhile soothsayers, astrologers and other opponents of the wi-fi system have resorted to an alternative technology - known as "orgone" - to combat the alleged negative effects of the high-tech system.

Well if soothsayers and astrologers think it’s a problem then case closed. Well, almost. I would just like to hear where dowsers stand on this issue before I give my final verdict.

What to do about this? Fortunately, a local man who “campaigns against EMFs” has the solution:

Matt Todd, […] has started building small generators which he believes can neutralise the allegedly-harmful radiation using the principles of orgone science. The pyramid-like machines use quartz crystals, selenite (a clear form of the mineral gypsum), semi-precious lapis lazuli stones, gold leaf and copper coil to absorb and recycle the supposedly-negative energy.

That’s what I like about new agers today. They don’t just want to get rid of the negative energy, they want to recycle it. This is sustainable woo!

But what is this “orgone science” solution, exactly? The Skeptics’ Dictionary has a piece on Orgone Energy and its creator, Wilhelm Reich:

Reich claimed to have created a new science (orgonomy) and to have discovered other entities, such as bions, which to this day only orgonomists can detect. Bions are alleged vesicles of orgone energy which are neither living nor non-living, but transitional beings.

Reich died on November 3, 1957, in the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he was sent for criminal contempt. The criminal charge was levied because Reich refused to obey an injunction against selling quack medical devices such as the Orgone Accumulator and orgone "shooters," devices which allegedly could collect and distribute orgone energy, thereby making possible the cure for just about any medical disorder except, perhaps, megalomania and self-delusion.

Orgone Away

So there is there is no such thing as Orgone energy. You have an imaginary illness. Don’t worry, it can be cured by an imaginary therapy. Perfect. Good woo cancels out bad woo. Well, recycles it, anyway.

On a more serious note, there’s no good evidence that Wi-Fi networks like this can cause any of the illnesses suggested. On the contrary, there have been several studies that show supposed Wi-Fi sensitive people can’t even tell if there is a Wi-Fi signal present or not when tested double-blind. Which would tend to support the Nocebo hypothesis (a placebo in reverse – giving the appearance of harm rather than the appearance of good). Plus there is no known scientific reason why such illnesses should result from Wi-Fi, which is a relatively low power signal. TechSkeptic’s article on DECT scares, although written to cover a slightly different aspect of microwave scares, is a good primer on the general issues, and includes links to the double-blind studies I mentioned. You could also read the World Health Organization’s Electromagnetic fields and public health article.

Let’s get real. Quoting soothsayers and astrologers as authorities to support these claims is a bit like getting in a Feng Shui practitioner to tell us if a bridge is safe or not.

December 13, 2008

A reader emailed me worried that perhaps a specific wireless technology called DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Technology) in a baby monitor might be dangerous to his baby. It seemed to me that this was probably bogus, but that the question was more TechSkeptic’s area, so I emailed him the question. He replied with a detailed post - DECT scares. His conclusion:

If you arent worried about your TV, or sleeping near your cell phone, or having heated sheets or leaving your computer on, then you really shouldn't worry about the effects of a DECT phone. There is simply no mechanism by which it can bother you, and better than that, there is really no evidence that the actual tiny emmissions from any radio device actually affects anyone, mechanism or not.

But you should read the full article. It includes easy to follow explanations of, for example, microwave radiation, and why microwaves from a DECT device will not cook you although a microwave oven does cook food. (Hint: the cooking is not due to the effects of ionizing radiation.)

When anyone starts talking about radiation and radio wave scares, electro-sensitivity or anything similar, the DECT scares post would be a good place to refer them.

December 01, 2008

From Orac today I learnt of the latest attempt by the religious to claim the entitlement they clearly believe is their birthright, namely to prevent anyone from criticizing their delusions. Apparently the United Nations has just backed an anti-blasphemy measure proposed by Islamic countries. Although this is currently only advisory to other UN members, the religious nuts clearly won’t stop there unless they absolutely have to. This is an issue of free speech – no one has a right to never be offended. Orac has a good expose of the dangers with this, and there’s no need for me to repeat the arguments here. Check out Orac’s post Anti-blasphemy = anti-free speech for the details.

I wanted to comment on one point though – fallacious logic from the Dutch government. Apparently the Dutch may scrap the current legal ban they have on blasphemy, effectively expanding hate speech to include it. The bit that caught my eye was the flawed justification for it:

The statement said there was no difference between insults aimed against people based on their race, religion, sexual orientation or handicap.

No no no no wrong wrong wrong. (Sigh.) We’ve been through this before. The argument is a false analogy. It’s quiet simple really. Race, handicap, sexual orientation are things that people ARE. Religious beliefs are IDEAS. They are not analogs. They are different things altogether. You should not criticize people because of their race, sexual orientation etc because these things can not be right or wrong, they just are. And we are all human beings, we should not be criticized for being black, being gay, whatever. But an idea (such as believing in the tenets of a religion) can be right or wrong. (Usually wrong, actually, in the case of religion, although that is besides the point with respect to the logic.) It’s really discouraging that the government of such a modern democracy apparently relies on such piss poor logic.

And look at the argument – it is nothing more than an argument by analogy – almost always fallacious. Here is their argument. It goes something like this:

We all know that ________ (insert preferred thing - racism, homophobia – something no one can disagree with) is bad.

Criticizing religion is just like ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_________ (same thing as in 1. above)

Therefore criticizing religion is bad.

You’ll notice, no actual evidence facts or logic are offered to show that criticizing religion is, actually, bad. And as I wrote before, when someone argues by analogy, you can be pretty sure it’s because they don’t have any facts, evidence or logic to support their position. Because if they had any facts, evidence or logic they would presumably present it. Now maybe someone can come up with a reason we shouldn’t criticize religion. I can’t think of a valid reason off hand, but perhaps there is one somewhere. But one thing is for sure, saying it’s just like racism isn’t it.

All ideas should be open to criticism. But no ideas should be subject to criticism more than religious ideas – they’re the ideas, out of all the ideas out there, not backed by evidence and in many cases clearly contradicted by the evidence. Which is of course why they want to ban criticism – because they know their delusions won’t stand up to investigation.

November 23, 2008

TechSkeptic sent me a link to Winston Wu's supposed Debunking the Arguments of Paranormal Skeptics and Debunkers, asking me if we should consider rebutting it. I'd seen Wu's piece before and had forgotten about it until TechSkeptic's email. I knew a comprehensive rebuttal to it had already been written. The rebuttal didn't come up easily on any web searches though, so I thought it needed publicizing.

Winston Wu's fallacy ridden piece has been on the web for some time now, and it gets no better with re-reading. Wu was so impressed with himself for writing it that he even turned up on the JREF Forum some years ago to promote himself. Read the actual thread started by Winston Wu; marvel at how he continues to insist he is winning the argument, long after his ass has been handed to him on a silver platter.

Anyway, the comprehensive rebuttal to Winston Wu (.pdf) was written by Paul Sandoval, and is hosted by Skeptic Report. It's necessarily long and detailed (as is the piece it rebuts), but it's all there if you have the time. Sandoval's piece is also a fine example of how to expose logical fallacies in someone else's argument, if you're unfamiliar with the subject.

October 02, 2008

Reading through Wednesday’s You Get Mail post, it struck me that Coburn's position was closer to Subjective Idealism, rather than Solipsism as a couple of people had suggested. Although Subjective Idealism and Solipsism share at least one weakness.

Subjective Idealism, popularized by Bishop Berkeley, is the philosophical view that there is no such thing as physical matter. Only the mind or spirit, and not physical matter, constitutes reality. From PhiloSophos.com:

Idealism, in terms of metaphysics, is the philosophical view that the mind or spirit constitutes the fundamental reality. It has taken several distinct but related forms. Among them are Objective and Subjective idealism. Objective idealism accepts common sense Realism (the view that material objects exist) but rejects Naturalism (according to which the mind and spiritual values have emerged from material things), whereas subjective idealism denies that material objects exist independently of human perception and thus stands opposed to both realism and naturalism.

You might recognize some of Coburn's arguments there (although mercifully not his verbosity or pomposity). OK, but why would we care? Well, it provides cover for a whole host of woo beliefs, for starters. For example, it’s perfect for believers in The Secret. If everything really is just the mind, then it’s a small step to believe that really really wanting something badly enough can actually make it happen.

So could it be true? Could it be that everything that we think of as physical, is actually just thought? Well, Samuel Johnson famously refuted Berkeley by kicking a rock and stating "I refute it thus." His point being that his toe hurt, so it must be real. (Or maybe the rock didn’t move because it was too big – take your pick.) Jimmy Blue has his own refutation: "Find a busy road, step in front of a speeding bus. If you live, tell us how 'real' it felt."

The thing is, strictly speaking, those arguments don’t refute Idealism. Your toe hurts when you kick the rock, but that could be because your mind imagines your non-material toe hurting. What these arguments do show is that there really is no difference between the Subjective Idealistic and the Materialistic worlds: your toe hurts (or you are killed when you jump in front of that bus), regardless. Or to put it another way, Subjective Idealism is unfalsifiable - if it were false, there is no test we could perform that it would fail. So the argument is essentially a waste of time.

Gravity again

Here’s another example that shows why it makes no difference. The Secret proponents such as Joe Vitale like to say that the law of attraction (LOA) is a law just like gravity. OK, let’s think about that. NASA uses the law of gravitation and Newton’s equations to calculate velocity and trajectories to get its rockets to go where it wants them to go. Let’s say they want to send a probe to Mars, to send back pictures of the Mars surface and other scientific data. Perhaps they’ll get the calculations correct. Or perhaps they’ll get them wrong (for example by confusing imperial with metric units). Of course, getting the calculations right or wrong means different results:

If they get the calculations correct, then the probe will land safely and they’ll get back the nice pictures and other scientific data they want. And that’s true whether there really is a physical planet Mars all those millions of miles away, or whether Mars is really just a product of our minds. We either get actual pictures of an actual physical planet, or we get what our minds construct as physical pictures of a physical planet. To us, there appears no difference. Either way we learn the same things about the planet Mars.

If they get the calculations wrong then the spacecraft will crash on the planet’s surface (or miss it altogether), and they’ll get nothing back. And that is true whether there really is a physical planet Mars all those millions of miles away, or whether Mars is really just a product of our minds. Either our physical selves don’t get the pictures of the physical Mars and so we learn nothing, or our non-physical minds don’t get back any images of what looks like a planet. Either way we learn nothing.

So with real scientific laws, like gravity, it makes no difference whether what we see is real matter or whether it is all a product of a minds. The results are the same and repeatable both ways. Likewise with non laws, like The Secret's LOA, it makes no difference either. Wishing for that bike won’t make it magically appear. And that is true whether it is a real physical bike or a construct of our minds that we just think is a physical bike. We won’t be getting the experience of riding that bike either way.

September 24, 2008

I get maybe a couple of emails a day on average from readers of this blog. Many are in the "thanks for being a voice of reason" type, but many are also of the "you're an arrogant idiot" type - many more of the first than the second though. But some of the second type are entertaining, in a perverse sort of way.

For example, I just received an email from one Stef Coburn, who really doesn't like this blog. I mean really. To the extent of 1800 words. Except that I find he wasn't really complaining about me, but about you gentle reader. Specifically, the regular commenters on this blog (you know who you are). It's a bit long and rambley, but it will become clear eventually. This was his original email:

Just came across your site and read through some of your postings growing steadily more appalled as I went. Finished up with your (and your various contributors) mind-bogglingly boorish, seemingly wilfully ever more progressively stupid treatment of a clearly well motivated if metaphysically confused single mother who after first making the mistake of describing her personally positive experience of 'The Secret', compounded this initial error in judgement with the naively mistaken impression that she was debating the subject with reasonable people. (as opposed to the pack of smugly self-satisfied pseudo-intellectual science-mullahs she had in fact fallen amongst) In maintaining and attempting to qualify her position, however ineffectually, in the face of the concerted and steadily more hysterically OTT attack you and your competitively-pissing pack-mates gratuitously subjected her to, this lady demonstrated a degree of 'grace' under fire as far beyond the capabilities of you and people like you as M31 galactic central is from whatever rock you live under.

For all your protestations of faux outrage at the (alleged) transgressions and emotional violations of Allison Dubois and her various ilk, it is my very strong impression that everything you people know about human decency and dignified restraint could be written on a post-it and posted in the Planck space. What could this lady have possibly said or done to deserve the treatment you all so joyfully meted out to her? Scientific knowledge and technological expertise, whilst, in themselves both the products and facilitators of human civilisation and intellectual progress clearly guarantee the presence of neither virtue in either their practitioners or their hangers-on. On the basis of your own ghastly expositions, I frankly don't think you or your cohorts would recognise a proportionate response, for instance, if it jumped up and spat in your eye.

Intellectual bullies like you have turned up (and continue with tedious regularity to turn up) throughout history, trumpeting their prejudices and inchoate or partial theories as fact or (paying lip service to reason) probable fact, in the name of science. (and 'natural philosophy' before there was any such thing as 'science') Often times these people have spent their entire professional or vocational lives putting the boot into others (as often as not as well 'qualified' as themselves) who, for whatever reason, have disagreed with them on this or that point of principle or order.

Far from any spirit of rational discourse and debate, the attacks you and people like you habitually and reflexively level at those who (whether logically or illogically) espouse theories, philosophies or, dare I say, 'beliefs' different in almost any significant regard from your (their) own, are frequently marked by a level of gratuitous (and, for the most part) entirely unnecessary and unrestrained viciousness levelled willy-nilly at their fellow beings, that, occurring in just about any other arena, than that sanctified by your supposed quest for 'truth' and, even then, more likely than not, safely insulated by physical distance, would likely quickly result in the reciprocal and entirely deserved visiting upon your physical person of what (to use a widely employed and understood oxymoron) is commonly referred to as 'a good kicking'.

So ******* what if you can, (as your fellow thug Tom Foss suggests he can) normalized a wave-function, describe the three-dimensional Time-Dependent Schrödinger Equation, or give the basic expression for momentum using the complex conjugate of the wave-function. As far as human consciousness is concerned (without which you could do none of these things) you simply don't know which way is 'up'. What (except in the most rarefied of circles) does it matter if you know what an eigenstate is or have any idea what value is represented by < a | a > if you can't comprehend the simple (anthropic) fact that without consciousness (which, despite the pretensions of intellectual nazis like you, you are no closer to understanding, let alone explaining than any rainforest native or Kalahari 'bushman') literally nothing would or could subjectively exist. As we only have, furthermore, our necessarily subjective human consciousness upon which to base and from which to derive whatever indicators we believe we have discovered, to the existence of a supposedly 'objective' universe 'external' in any meaningful sense to ourselves, in the absence of an explanation for this precursor 'ground' of our being, the jury, whether over-protesting dressed-up talking chimpanzees like you (or me for that matter) like it or not, can only be said to be stubbornly 'out' where the nature of 'reality' is concerned.

When you dream about a tree, I'll bet you waste not a moment doubting its existence, but only appreciate it as the source of equally unquestioned dream-fruit, or thankfully shin-up it to escape the equally substantial dream-tiger that is chasing you. When you 'wake-up' where is the tree? Who is to say that the World you perceive (and measure) in your alleged 'waking' state has any more 'objective' substance than the objects (and people) you experienced in your dream. Ever had a 'false awakening' where you thought you had awoken from one dream, only to find that you were still caught up in another? How do you know, as a matter of irrefutable fact that any such state as 'awake' even exists? To save you the bother, I'll answer for you here. Whatever comforting intellectual protestations and sophistry you may employ to argue otherwise, you simply don't.

Even assuming (for the sake of argument) the existence of the physical, you ultimately have to take it on 'faith' that the picture of the World (even you must acknowledge) you are constructing in your brain from the mish-mash (a technical term) of diverse electro-chemical impulses arriving there via your nerve fibres, corresponds to a commonly imagined but ultimately unprovable objective environment. For all you know, the 'laws' of physics only remain 'lawful' for as long as you continue to imagine them so. For all you know, you either have no physical 'reality' at all, or if you in fact do, are nothing more than a disembodied brain in a bucket, being fed (Matrix-like) a stream of data from which you elaborately derive the perceived entirety of your world. In either case, as with so called 'lucid' dreaming, who is to say that the 'rules' of the game are anything like as fixed as people like you commonly assume? Who is to say that merely by 'believing' otherwise, the world, or to make a critical distinction, an individual's subjective experience of the world (the only kind of experience we can prove - cogito ergo sum) cannot be altered to suit whatever belief system or cloud-cuckoo land fantasy we can dream up? Who is to say that each of us does not constitute the perceptual centre of our own separate idiosyncratically constructed 'parallel' universe, in which all imagined facts and figures are uniquely formed by and channelled through our own biased (this way or that) perceptual moulds and filters?

Please note carefully here, that I am not insisting that any of this is so, merely that, as things currently stand, neither you nor anyone else can prove that it is not so. Your broadly demonstrated arrogance therefore is simply that; you abrogate to yourself, an absolute knowledge that you (in common with all the other 'pro-simians' with whom you share (or appear to share) existence, simply do not, possibly even cannot, have. This being irrefutably the case, (though you're certainly welcome to try and prove otherwise - knock yourself out) it therefore behoves all of us to behave with at least a modicum of humility, particularly in regard to our fellow beings.

Put simply, as no-one can state with any certainty that they know (as opposed to merely believe or think they know) how the World works, but everyone knows when they're being unjustly 'dissed' or dismissed, it is, at least 99.999 percent of the time, more important (certainly more consequential) therefore to be nice than right. No matter how infuriating the widely demonstrated human aversion to logic and applied reason can seem, in the face of this or that 'beautiful' body of theoretical or experimental so-called 'knowledge', except in the most extreme cases where others, acting out of degradation, prejudice or malice, have set themselves against us, laws of courtesy and common decency must take clear and constant priority over whatever body of abstraction we might philosophically adhere to. To do otherwise is to act as the catholic and muslim (to name but two) so-called, self-appointed, religious 'authorities' have historically acted toward those who have not enthusiastically echoed (if not necessarily shared) their own imperialising brand of unproven and unprovable superstition. When you castigate and condemn people as 'pro-simians' or 'dipshits' merely for disagreeing with you, regardless of their education or lack of it, how is that different in substance from advocating the excommunication or even (metaphorically at least) the burning or stoning of those you consider to be either 'heretics' against, or infidel unbelievers in 'holy' science? When you apply glib contemptuously dismissive labels like 'woo woo' to your fellow humans, how is that different in any substantial regard to the application of other terms of prejudicial abuse like 'untermenschen' 'split-tail' or 'nigger'? You use 'woo' in the exactly the same way, after all, to set yourself apart from a perceived underclass to whom you flatter (and likely delude) yourself, you are in some way superior. When I refer to you and people like you as intellectual 'bullies', 'thugs' or 'nazis' on the other hand I am merely applying the widely understood appropriately descriptive terms for the kind of (unkind) person who, instead of engaging in properly civil rational discourse to settle differences or convey information, prefers instead to resort to fundamentally anti-intellectual intentionally destructive, prejudicial put-downs against people who, regardless of (perceived) educational shortcomings or philosophical differences, are as deserving of courtesy and consideration as any of your (perceived or imagined) peers.

Explain to anyone who cares by all means, wherever possible, in words of one syllable if you have to, (or even can) the difference between the 'scientific method' and other less disciplined forms of thought, but the aggressively hostile hysterical emotionalism with which you leap to attack those not manifestly privileged with your (here assumed - after all I don't know you from mythical Adam) education, constitutes behaviour which the so-called 'enlightenment' of science is supposed to steer us (as a species) away from rather than simply instantiating new barbarism and division in the place of the old.

Oh yes and for ***** sake learn to spell!

P..S. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. My money's on the LHC won't find 'superpartners' black-holes or the 'Higgs particle; the 'standard model' and the 'big-bang' are wishful figments of human imagining; and all those frightfully clever chaps and chappesses at CERN are going to be scratching their primate heads and revising their exorbitant budgets for a long long time to come.

(Note - I ****ed out the f-words. Not that I'm especially prudish, but I have managed to avoid them so far in my actual posts, if not the comments, for over three years, and I'm not letting this jackass be the one to change that.)

Anyway - a confused person and a confusing email. "Learn to spell"? I know I'm not a great speller, which is why I put everything through a spell checker. Typos, yes. Spelling? Really? But apart from that, this was nothing more than the usual badly reasoned rants we have some to expect.

Fallacies displayed:

Falsely conflating science and religion

Ad hominem

False analogy - confusing difference of opinion with pointing out lack of evidence

Implied threat of violence

Science doesn't know everything

Comparisons to the nazis (because pointing out that something is contradicted by the evidence is exactly the same as killing 6 million Jews)

Appeal to be open minded

Probably some others - he tends to repeat himself. But in all that, I didn't see anything that he could point to that I actually got wrong in any of my posts. So I replied:

So what, exactly, do you think I got wrong in any of my posts. Apart from spelling.

Just wondering. Because you don't seem to have come up with anything.

Fairly simple question. But apparently, despite his anger at all he dislikes about this blog, one that he was unprepared to answer. He replied:

This just a quick first response, my blow by blow analysis of the correspondence that ticked me off will follow in due course.

I have not so far suggested (though this will likely change) that you have inappropriately alleged or ignored any specific known or published and peer-reviewed scientific theory or established 'fact'. I know nothing of your personal history, cultural or ethnic derivation, professional qualification (or lack thereof), or gender specificity. For all I know you could be a fully paid up scientific professional with degrees up the wazoo and a 'cream of the crop' intellectual ego to match, or you could be a student tyro with unfulfilled aspirations jacking up their lack of self-eteem by getting together with other bullies to beat-up people you think lesser than yourself.

My contention, Sir or Madam, is that whilst you may or may not consider yourself an officer, you are neither gentleman nor lady.

As for what I think you got wrong, try switching on the other hemisphere of your brain and reading my mail again.

Wooooooooo

Note he hasn't suggested I have ignored studies, but he knows that (once he works on it) he will be able to show that I have. So decision made before evidence examined - how closed minded of him. Typical woo, of course. Anyway, I replied:

So you've got nothing. Didn't think you did.

He replied with the barely comprehensible:

Told (you fatuous twat) full critique of your correspondence with Mora on the way (including all the 'straw men' arguments you and your idiot pals set-up and attributed to her then shot-down to make yourselves seem relevant in front of Randi and your fellow co-religionists) will take time to assemble (so as not to miss anything) Currently has low priority though as I have much much better things (though not necessarily more enjoyable things) to do. Gist of it is you're a pretentious jumped-up arsehole which I'll have no trouble demonstating [sic] as and when I can get round to giving the irksome crap you belaboured that poor lady with the benefit of a properly forensic analysis..

Aah, how gallant - coming to the defense of a "poor lady". Rather condescending to her though in my view. Also the gallantry was sort-of spoiled by the vulgar language. And the spelling!

But he also gave the first clue about what it was he was so angry about. "Mora". Presumably this Mora who commented on my The Secret post. The Mora who I never replied to myself - several others did, but I didn't. (I only have so much time, and I don't see that I have to reply to all comments - especially if someone else is dealing with it.) I guess he never noticed that at the bottom of each comment, just after the words "Posted by:", there is the name of the person who wrote and posted the comment. And it wasn't me who replied to her. (Not that I necessarily disagreed with what anyone wrote, but everyone has their own style, and I'm not responsible for what anyone else writes.) Yes, this clown read comment after comment, thousands of words, and apparently couldn't figure out that there are people other than me commenting here. I guess he's not familiar with this new-fangled "blogging" idea. What a jackass.

Anyway, I thought I'd post his criticisms here so that the commenters he's critical of can read what he is accusing them of and reply if they want. I expect he'll comment here eventually too. Assuming he figures out what the "Comments" link below is for.

August 04, 2008

I was really disappointed in Criss Angel and in the stunt he pulled on the live “Mindfreak” show last week. (I only just watched my DVR of the show – it was live for me.) Of course, we know that Angel pulls camera tricks, and that all his “live” acts are not actually totally live and unedited. Well, it seems obvious to me, anyway. But he went up a lot in my estimation last year when he called out pretend psychic Jim Callahan on live TV. Anyone who shows up one of these frauds on live TV must be OK, you would think. But what to make of someone who doesn’t show much integrity himself?

SPOLIER ALERT

SPOILERS FOLLOW. If you haven’t seen the show and don’t want the ending spoiled, don’t read any further.

OK, this is what happened. The setup is that Criss is handcuffed to the balcony of a building that is going to be demolished exactly four minutes after Criss starts his escape. He has to escape from the handcuffs, open several locked doors, and get to the waiting helicopter on the roof before the building explodes. What we are shown via the fixed cameras left in the building, is that Criss is still in the building, unable to open the last door, and fails to reach the roof in time and the building explodes with him in it. A few minutes later, Criss is shown, covered in dust, emerging from the rubble, as though he had been in the building and survived the demolition. Obviously, this was faked.

What we actually saw, and what was obviously planned, is footage of Criss taken earlier running up the stairs, trying to open the locks etc. In reality Criss had actually escaped via a hidden ground floor door or window to a nearby safe retreat. After the explosion, and just before the dust settled, he scuttled over to where the building had been, and emerged, feigning shock, injury, etc. Totally lame.

How do we know this was faked? Well, because obviously he wasn’t in the building when it went up, because no one would have walked away from that. Occam’s Razor – the most parsimonious explanation is that he faked the film. But there is more. Reporters at the Fox 13 local TV station think they saw Criss running back just after the blast:

In the seconds after the blast, when dust was still filling the air, someone dressed in a dark shirt and ballcap -- like Criss' -- appeared to run out of a neighboring building and hide among the debris in front of the now-demolished hotel. Watching the A&E footage closely, his ballcap is visible amidst the debris several seconds before he 'miraculously' appears in that same location.

There were other tell tales. For example, all the cameras inside the building went to the one same snowy image at the same time just before the explosion. But several cameras don’t all go to the one image for any reason I can think of, unless it was pre-edited. Also, there are inconsistencies in the film sequences – some shots show him with handcuffs hanging from his pocket, others do not – that suggest some of the film was shot earlier.

See the video below for an explanation from the TV crew.

Now OK, I know Criss does illusions. He makes you think you see something that didn’t actually happen. That's his job. And I get he sometimes pushes the camera tricks a little more than is strictly kosher. But this was billed as a dangerous stunt – so dangerous he promised his dear old Mum he would never do anything so dangerous ever again. Aah. In reality there was little danger. Oh sure, for most people it would have been extremely dangerous. But Criss is an escape artist who gets paid millions for this stuff. For him, this was nothing. Certainly nothing like he was claiming. After he had removed the handcuffs, there was nothing stopping him from escaping. (The window he kicked in when he “couldn’t” open the door, was obviously a trick window. Windows on balconies in Florida don't just break when kicked.) Pretty lame considering it was claimed before this trick that with this stunt, Angel might exceed even what Houdini had achieved. Hardly. In reality it was a nothing but a damp squib, a lame and disappointing end to the series. And sadly, I think with this faked trick pretending to be something else, he has lost all credibility in calling out any more Jim Callahans.

July 28, 2008

No, it’s not a region in France. Provenance is a thing’s origin or source, and the history of its subsequent owners. It’s important when, for example, selling works of fine art. If you find a long lost Picasso in your granny’s attic you might have trouble convincing the experts it’s real, even if it looks real. If it’s very good, you might be able to sell it for a decent amount of cash, but doubt about its origin will mean you only get a fraction of what a verified Picasso would fetch. But if your granny could prove she worked as, say, Picasso’s housekeeper during the period he produced that type of work, you might get a lot more. The quality of its provenance would make it more likely the work was genuine. Provenance is a necessary factor in the valuation of art – to determine that it is (a) genuine and (b) legally owned.

Provenance is also useful in determining the validity of scientific claims. If the claim is based on earlier sound science – backed by quality evidence – it is more likely to be true. Not certain to be true, of course. But it will at least have scientific plausibility. But if the claim is based on something that was just made up, then it seems much less likely it would be true.

An Example

An example of a scientific discovery with provenance would be radio waves. First, a little background. James Clerk Maxwell was the first person to make color photographs from three black and white images. Maxwell developed his ideas about color photography from those of Thomas Young, who had theorized that color vision resulted from only three primary color receptors in the human eye. Using this information, Maxwell took three black and white photographs of the same object, each through a different primary color (red, blue or green) filter. That way, each photographic plate, although only appearing in black and white, would actually contain only the information from one primary color - that of the filter used. (Because a blue filter, for example, only transmits blue light). Maxwell’s technique was to project each of these three plates simultaneously onto a screen, but with each image projected back through a filter of the same color used when taking the original photograph. When all three images were projected in the exact same position, a full color picture was reproduced (see below). It must have seemed miraculous at the time. Of course, we know now that the three primary colors are all electromagnetic radiation, but just with slightly different wavelengths.

Maxwell’s main work was to investigate electricity and magnetism. His first paper on the subject built on Faraday’s earlier discoveries, and in 1862 Maxwell discovered that that the forces of electricity and magnetism were transmitted at the speed of light. Eventually, via experiment, Maxwell developed a set of four equations that could solve every mathematical query to do with electricity and magnetism. Possibly the most interesting aspect of these equations was that a constant in the equations – the equations used to describe electricity and magnetism – was “c”, the speed of light. Clearly, visible light was made of the same stuff as other electromagnetic radiation. And here’s the thing: Maxwell predicted from this that there would be other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, including radio waves that were actually not discovered until 20 years later, by Heinrich Hertz.

The discovery of radio waves can be traced from the work done by Newton (who split white light with a prism), through Young, Huygens, Faraday, Maxwell, Hertz and beyond. Hertz didn’t just wake up one day and say, “let’s see if I can generate radio waves”, his ideas were based on what had gone before. This meant that radio waves, although not yet proven to exist, were not as extraordinary a claim as they would have been but for the work done by Maxwell and the others. So the evidence for their existence perhaps didn’t have to be that extraordinary. None the less, solid evidence was presented, and is replicated every day by anyone who listens to the radio or watches TV.

Lack of Provenance for Woo

Now, compare the provenance of radio waves – the history of gradual increases in knowledge, backed by experiment – with, say, homeopathy. When Hahnemann first dreamed up homeopathy, there was no body of earlier work that showed that like might cure like, or that diluting things might make the good effects stronger (while making the bad effects weaker). On the contrary, Hahnemann really did wake up one day and say “I’ll bet like cures like”, or something very similar (and in German, probably). And when people got sick from taking his remedies (which was quite often), he really did dilute them and just say “diluting makes them stronger”. I’m not referring to the fact that he never tested these ideas by rigorous experiment (although he clearly didn’t). I’m referring to the fact that there was no body of work he was drawing on to reach his conclusions. I’m referring to the fact that he really did just make it up on the fly. While that does not, in and of itself, mean homeopathy is nonsense, its lack of scientific provenance does make it an extraordinary claim. And as I have written before, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. At the very least, this means that we require better evidence than we would demand for things that do have provenance – things that are based on earlier discoveries. But with homeopathy, we are always asked to accept lesser evidence – anecdotes, clinical notes from homeopaths, poorly designed tests.

The same is true with astrology. In my astrology challenge, I explained how Galileo discovered that the planets orbited the Sun and not the Earth - the provenance of our knowledge. I then asked for the similar information about astrology. I asked several leading astrologers actually, and they couldn’t tell me. Astrology has no scientific provenance, it was just made up. (And it doesn’t do what it claims.)

Likewise with psychic phenomena – psi. In pretty soon I gave a brief history of psychical research. But current parapsychology doesn’t depend on a history of earlier successful parapsychological experiments, each one building upon the knowledge gained from an earlier experimenter. On the contrary, the history of parapsychological research of the last 125 years is of experiments failed, psychics or experimenters found to have cheated, avenues of experiment abandoned and new experiments with weaker controls implemented instead. I suppose that’s a provenance of sorts – a failed provenance. Compare Hertz’s successful discovery of radio waves, building on the work of Maxwell, Faraday and Newton, with the dopes on Larry King two weeks ago, insisting that the dreams and “shadows” seen by some imaginative children are actually evidence of contact with people who have died. Claims based on nothing at all – in fact, claims belied by the consistent failure in over 125 years to build anything even remotely resembling a body of knowledge backed by solid experimental evidence.

When examining claims, it’s always good to examine the evidence for them, but it’s also instructive to examine the provenance of those claims. Whether it’s homeopathy, astrology, acupuncture, psychics, religion… woos can never demonstrate the provenance of their claims the way scientists can explain how, for example, radio waves were discovered. In fact, the really remarkable thing about most woo claims is not the total lack of evidence for them, or even the evidence against them, although that is obviously remarkable. What’s really worth noting is that virtually all woo claims were not derived by experiment, but were just made up.

Perhaps it’s not that surprising – if woo claims had to be derived by experiment, there wouldn’t be any woo claims.

April 07, 2008

Following my Creationist Bingo and Psychic Bingo (sorry, that should be “pretend-psychic”/ “cold-reader” bingo), cards, TechSkeptic just developed an on-line Topical Bingo playable version which includes explanations for the squares – a brief debunking of the creationist arguments used. Check them out. Right click each square for the relevant explanation. You’ll need to download the .Net framework (the download link is also on the site) unless you have Vista, but I managed to do that so it can’t be too difficult.

Currently he has only the creationist bingo with the explanations/ debunkings, but more are to follow including for non-evidence based medicine and global warming denial. I’m sure he’ll appreciate any comments or suggestions.

February 18, 2008

Well, they did it. In November I wrote about how the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) flooded the house of a scientist who was involved in animal research. They said they really wanted to torch the house, but just flooded it instead. What heroes. Via BPSDP to Blue Collar Scientist, I just learned they came back on February 4th and set an incendiary device on her porch. I’m not sure how much damage was caused, but the device apparently did ignite and cause some damage.

February 10, 2008

That’s often the fallback of woos when the lack of evidence for their claims is exposed – “what’s the harm?” The desperate last argument goes something like, “OK, maybe there’s no evidence for [brand of woo], but what’s the harm in believing it?” Of course, it’s a red herring - paint the skeptics as mean for arguing against their harmless woo, and they can escape having to admit their woo is nonsense.

Of course, woo does cause harm. Just ask Mark Klass or the parents of Shawn Hornbeck, for example. Or the police who are forced to waste time chasing the lame guesses of “psychics” such as Allison Dubois. Don’t forget the time wasted by the authorities looking for Elizabeth Smart’s dead body where the PsiTech fraudsters claimed it was buried.

So called “alternative medicine” might not harm people directly (homeopathy’s only water, after all), but when it causes people to adopt quackery in place of the real medicine that could save their lives, it does do harm.

As I’ve said before, all skeptics should have responses such as the above, ready. The Skeptics' Dictionary has a What's the harm? archive that is worth consulting. Now there is also a website called What’s The Harm? It aims to record the numerous instances where woo has actually verifiably caused harm. As they say, “2,427 people killed, 117,711 injured and over $115,461,902 in economic damages”. I think the $902 at the end is pretending a degree of accuracy that isn’t really there, but minor niggles notwithstanding, it’s a great resource.

The site is pretty new and is of course a work in progress. If you have any examples, the webmaster would love to hear from you. The strength and success of this site in my view, will be in submissions they receive from readers, so please consider sending them any cases that you are aware of. Please read their criteria, and check first that the case you’re submitting isn’t already there. Also, include citations to support your case – it is a skeptics’ site, after all. The webmaster has the following tips, if you feel like being proactive and searching for some additional cases with The Google:

Tip 1: Simply combining the name of some form of woo with the word "died" or "injured", often gets amazing results. For example, "naturopath died".

Tip 2: Use the archive search on Google News. You can search older news at Google. There are tools there to limit the year as well.

Tip 3: Please check the site to see if I already have the case! No sense wasting your time on something I already have. However, if you find a link that is better than the link I'm using on a given story, feel free to send that in.

Tip 4: Pick a category I don't have many cases in. If you don't have a favorite form of woo that you would rather concentrate on, browse the whatstheharm.net topics list and pick a topic I have under 20 cases in. (There are a bunch). This makes it easier to avoid having to scroll through stories I already have while searching.

Tip 5: If you have non-web resources available, use them. Anybody have access to Lexis/Nexis or other non-public databases? Many news web sites cycle their stories very quickly. I've had some of my links go stale just in the four months I've been doing this. But those pay databases keep everything. I'm thinking the same search techniques that I mention above might work well there.

Given time I expect the number of cases included to be huge.

Of course, some woos will argue that, for example, real medicine can also cause harm, medical mistakes are made, wrong medications prescribed etc. That’s of course true, but real medicine also has a benefit and so there is a risk / reward trade off. Woo has no benefit and so there is no risk / reward trade off, only risk / risk. This site aims to quantify some of that risk, and certainly shows that woo does, in fact, cause harm.

February 08, 2008

Some twit called Nicholas D. Kristof writes in the New York Times that criticizing religion is the same as racism or sexism:

At a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party, few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama's race or Hillary Clinton's sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee's religious faith.

Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock.

Those poor downtrodden Christians again who are, don’t forget, the minority in the US with no money no resources and no power. Oh wait, no they’re not. Fortunately Ed at Dispatches From the Culture Wars puts Kristof’s silly argument in its place. Ed calls it a category error; I’d say it was a false analogy. Read Ed’s whole piece – I couldn’t have said it better. (Well I’m sure I could, but read Ed’s piece anyway.)

Anyway, thinking about this yesterday, it occurred to me that woos just love argument by analogy – in fact they’d be totally stuck without it. Here’s how it goes:

Racism is bad

Criticizing religion is like racism

Therefore criticizing religion is bad

Notice they didn’t have to show any actual evidence that criticizing religion is bad. Standard woo – no facts, evidence or logic, so argue by analogy instead. Here’s the thing - if I had to argue that racism is bad, I wouldn’t think of an analog to racism that we all agree is bad, and say “hey, racism’s the same”. No, I would explain why racism is bad. With perhaps some facts, citations, logic, evidence. Of course, I could do that because racism is, actually, bad, and so the facts logic and evidence are there to support the statement. Woos don’t have anything to back up their position, so analogy is often all they have. Where would Michael Behe do without Mount Rushmore? Or a mousetrap? And what would Kristof have written about without racism or sexism?

When someone argues by analogy, you can be pretty sure it’s because they don’t have any facts, evidence or logic to support their position. And all you have to do to debunk their argument, is find the flaw in the analogy.

February 01, 2008

This Sunday February 3rd will be the third anniversary of this blog, and as with previous years I've revisited the numerous kooks we met in the last year, and thought about how they would answer the age old question: why did the chicken cross the road? See my post commemorating 2006’s first anniversary, Why did the chicken cross the road?, and the 2007 version, Why did the chicken re-cross the road? for the previous versions. And with no long-winded preamble, I give you 2008’s version of:

Our vaccines are making chickens cross roads because of the mercury in them. How many more chickens are crossing roads every year because there is so much mercury everywhere? Amish chickens don’t cross roads, neither do Christian Scientists’ or Scientologists’ chickens… (continued next year).

"Perverts Without Morals" chose to deliberately mock Jesus Christ, Christians and The Last Supper, by depicting a chicken in the place of Jesus Christ. An egg can clearly be seen in front of the chicken, and we Christians will no longer tolerate this abuse nor be silent.

The chicken didn’t thank Jesus for its crossing the road award. This is disgraceful. The chicken needs to make a swift and unequivocal apology to Christians. If she does, she will get this issue behind her. If she does not, she will be remembered as a foul-mouthed bigot for the rest of her life.

I'm very angry about it because people are going to get salmonella - there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent salmonella and you won't find that in any textbook or journal of homeopathy so people will get salmonella, people may even die of salmonella if they follow this advice.

I have this magic quantum box that can tell me exactly where in the world a chicken is crossing the road. All I need is a piece of the chicken’s DNA. Look, I said DNA. Also GPS. So this must be science, science, science! That is what is so fantastic about it. It’s just science. That’s it. I have no idea where Madeleine McCann is though.

It’s disgraceful that we experiment on chickens by seeing if they can cross roads. Send back any products from companies that make chickens cross roads. Terrorize the scientists who work for them. Pass me my pain pills. They’ve been fully tested on chickens, right?

In Jesus' resurrection, for example, Christians presuppose that God exists and that He could easily have raised Jesus from the dead. The evidence of fulfilled prophecy, eyewitness records, and changed lives of the disciples is enough to convince many people who believe in God that Jesus rose from the dead. This is a logical conclusion based on the presupposition and the evidence.

The CARM’s position that “Christians presuppose that God exists and that He could easily have raised Jesus from the dead” is circular reasoning: they’re using the resurrection as evidence that Jesus was resurrected (and was therefore the son of God, etc), but their admitted presupposition is that God exists and would have resurrected his son. Of course, if you start from the position that Jesus was the son of God then your “logical conclusion” pretty much has to be that Jesus was resurrected. Who needs evidence?

They then misstate the atheists’ position to accuse atheists of doing what they just admitted to doing themselves:

Atheists, on the other hand, would negate the resurrection by default since their presupposition that there is no God would require that God involvement cannot occur. Therefore, for an atheist the extraordinary evidence would have to be "exceptionally" extraordinary in order to overcome his atheistic presuppositions.

No. It has nothing to do with “atheistic presuppositions”. It is because of the “presupposition” (actually, the extraordinary evidence that exists), that show DEAD PEOPLE DO NOT COME BACK TO LIFE. I’m not talking about people who were technically “dead” for a short while but who were brought back by heroic modern medicine. I’m talking about someone who was really dead, for nearly two days, without modern machinery to keep the organs working, who was resurrected by magic.

I find it telling that the CARM accuse atheists of presupposing their conclusion (they don’t), when that is exactly what the CARM just did. (Projection?) And remember, I used their own actual statement of what their presuppositions are, from their own article – not a straw man version of their presuppositions as they did with the atheists' supposed presupposition.

This is why the skeptic must require "extraordinary evidence." It enables him to retain his presupposition should the extraordinary level of the evidence not be met. Therefore, requiring extraordinary evidence effectively stacks the deck against the claim.

No. The absurdity of the claim – a dead person coming back to life - stacks the deck against the claim.

When debating skeptics, I often ask them to tell me what would qualify as extraordinary evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Generally, nothing sensible is offered. Normal evidence would be written accounts. Extraordinary evidence would be a film, but we know that this extraordinary evidence is not reasonable since there was no film in Jesus' time. Therefore, can the requirement that extraordinary claims (Christ's resurrection) require extraordinary evidence apply to Jesus' resurrection?

It can and it should. It is not the fault of the atheist that Christians have nothing but lame second-hand anecdotes for this patently absurd claim. The burden of proof is upon the claimant, not upon those who doubt the absurd claim.

It would seem not. Since Jesus' resurrection is alleged to be a historical event, then it seems logical that normal historical evidence and normal historical examination of that evidence would be all we could offer. The resurrection is supposed to be an event of history and since it claims historical validity, then typical criteria for examining historical claims should be applied.

No. Unless the historical claims they refer to also involve raising the dead. Which they rarely do.

They go on to equivocate about how historic claims are judged differently because of the difficulty in testing events that happened a long time ago. But historians are generally evaluating claims such as who won a war, why they won (better tactics, better weapons?), who was involved in implementing legislation, etc. These things can often be inferred from a variety of sources. But they are not, in the main, extraordinary claims. One historian might say a war was won because of a better general; another might say it was bad weather than got the troops of one side bogged down in the mud. One or both of these explanations might be wrong. But neither requires you to accept some new and extraordinary claim such as (for example) that if you accept Jesus you will live in heaven forever. The CARM equivocate about this difference:

Furthermore, we cannot ascertain all things with absolute certainty. We cannot, for example, prove that Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) ever lived by observing him. But, we have ancient writings from eyewitnesses concerning his existence. Skeptics readily believe in Alexander the Great without involving the scientific method and without requiring "extraordinary evidence" yet they will require it of Jesus' existence.

No. They have created a false analogy. When expressed properly, it applies to the atheist position, not the Christian one, as I will demonstrate. As with Alexander the Great, we cannot prove that a historic Jesus actually existed. However, we have ancient writings (not from eyewitnesses, but I’ll let that slide for the sake of argument), concerning his existence. I am prepared to accept that a historic Jesus could have lived, without involving the scientific method and without requiring "extraordinary evidence". What I will not accept is that he died, was resurrected, and now lives in the sky. That, is the extraordinary claim. It is absurd. And there is no rational reason for anyone to believe it.

January 14, 2008

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish…

Replace “miracle” with “extraordinary claim”, and you have the basis of the quote that Carl Sagan popularized. And intuitively, most people would agree with it in principle. For example, if I told you I had cereal for breakfast, you would probably believe me. You know cereal exists and that people eat it for breakfast. Of course, I could be lying, but even if I were, I have not asked you to accept some new and extraordinary idea. (The fact that I lied wouldn’t mean that cereal somehow doesn’t exist any more.) However, if I told you that the cereal I eat every day will guarantee that I will never get sick and will live to be 100, you would probably want some evidence of that, and some pretty good evidence too.

Strictly speaking, all claims require exactly the same amount of evidence, it’s just that most "ordinary" claims are already backed by extraordinary evidence that you don’t think about. When we say “extraordinary claims”, what we actually mean are claims that do not already have evidence supporting them, or sometimes claims that have extraordinary evidence against them. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence because they usually contradict claims that are backed by extraordinary evidence. The evidence for the extraordinary claim must support the new claim as well as explain why the old claims that are now being abandoned, previously appeared to be correct. The extraordinary evidence must account for the abandoned claim, while also explaining the new one.

Most people are probably unaware of the amount of extraordinary evidence required for most scientific claims. Not only must the experiments be written up in such a way that others can challenge the assumptions and be able to spot errors, but they must also be independently replicated. In addition, most scientific discoveries have provenance – that is, we know how and why we decided to test this claim in the first place. For example, a new drug may have a theoretical rationally as well as positive in vitro and animal testing before it is even tested on humans. Consequently, we already have reasons to suppose it might work. Compare that with much of alternative medicine, where we have no basis to suppose it works, and whose tenants tenets we are pretty sure were just made up. In this case by “extraordinary evidence,” all we really mean is the same level of evidence that supports real medicine.

You can see than my claim I had cereal for breakfast is not extraordinary. We know cereal exists and people eat it. There are no other accepted or “proven” claims that you have to abandon to accept that I ate cereal for breakfast. The claim that my cereal will guarantee I will live to be 100 is an extraordinary claim. It is counter to all the other evidence we have that there is no one simple thing you can eat that will guarantee no illness and such a long life.

Examples of Extraordinary Claims

Part of the difficulty in defining what makes an extraordinary claim is this: claims that skeptics consider extraordinary, woos consider quite normal. Woos often consider that (for example) it is already a given that psychics exist, therefore anecdotal evidence is good enough for them. But psychics are scientifically implausible and have not been shown to be real. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real; it does mean we need extraordinary evidence to suppose they are. Woos start from the place that these things are already supported by evidence, and that’s where they go wrong. I’ve tried below to explain what is extraordinary about the following claims – what other claims, and what other implicit evidence, they contradict.

Homeopathy

Homeopathy is the definition of an extraordinary claim, It is initially extraordinary because it does not have provenance – that is, we know that Hahnemann didn’t derive the laws of homeopathy by experiment, he just made them up ad-hoc. Hahnemann made up the Law of Similars based on an observation of one thing (quinine / malaria symptoms), and this “Law” has not been replicated or confirmed. In fact, we now know the Law of Similars is false. We also know from every other piece of evidence we have, that when you dilute something it gets weaker, not stronger. Because of these two basic flaws, homeopathy requires stronger evidence than we would ask from other therapies. And yet with homeopathy we are expected to accept weaker evidence – anecdotes and non-blinded studies written by homeopaths. All well run double-blind tests show homeopathy is no more than placebo.

Incidentally, most alternative medical therapies suffer the same lack of provenance flaw – ie they were mostly just made up by ancient peoples with no knowledge of how the body actually works or of what makes us sick. Similarly, we are mostly offered anecdotes in place of evidence.

Astrology

Astrology is similar to homeopathy in that we know it was not derived by experiment, but was most likely just made up by people who saw pictures in the sky. (At least, no one has ever been able to show this explanation is wrong.) In addition, there is no plausible explanation for how astrology might work – ie what forces could alter a newborn’s personality in the precise ways claimed. Despite this lack of provenance and plausibility, we are still offered only anecdotes and appeals to science doesn’t know everything.

Jesus’ resurrection after 2 days

This goes against all the evidence that people do not come back to life, spontaneously, after two days. Modern medicine can bring people back from what would have been considered in earlier years to be “dead”, but not after 2 days of being dead with no modern life support to keep the vital organs working. In fact, it is probably reasonably safe to say it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that people cannot come back to life after being dead for two days. The evidence we are offered are accounts written decades after the event, by people who were not there when the events described were purported to have occurred. We are offered nothing but hearsay anecdotes from superstitious people with a clear reason for wanting others to think the story true. This is hardly acceptable evidence to counteract the fact that this never happens. Christians might ask, what evidence would a skeptic accept for such an extraordinary claim. The fact that even in principle you are unlikely to find extraordinary evidence 2000 years later, is hardly the non-believer’s fault.

Psychics

Psychic powers are extraordinary initially because of lack of scientific plausibility: that is, we have no known way for psychic signals to be sent and received. Lack of plausibility doesn’t mean something isn’t true, but it does make it extraordinary. The continued lack of good evidence for psychic powers, despite 125 years of looking, means that even more extraordinary evidence is now required to explain why the previous 125 years of looking were unsuccessful. For example, attempts to prove psychic powers with Zener cards were abandoned when the few positive results that were obtained were shown to have been achieved by cheating. Subsequent tests of psychics have resorted to tests that are easier to fudge – tests requiring judging to determine if the psychic got it right or not. The wiggle room this introduced results in less extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim that has been strangely shy to appear when properly tested (in a way that would truly be extraordinary evidence, if it worked). Instead we are left with lame guesses by the likes of Sylvia Browne and Allison Dubois, that are anything but extraordinary except in the sense that they are extraordinary bad.

Alien Visitation

Strictly speaking, alien visitation does not contradict other claims that are known to be true. It is theoretically possible that aliens exist and may hold advanced technology that enables them to travel across the galaxy. But the claim is extraordinary in that there is zero evidence alien visitation has actually occurred, despite at least sixty years of looking. In addition, there are rational explanations for many claims of alien visitation. There is no hard evidence of alien visitation, such as a crashed spacecraft with technology far advanced of our own.

November 10, 2007

You may have read recently how the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) recently caused $20-30,000 damage to the house of a scientist, because the scientist’s work includes animal testing. Actually, the scientist was lucky: the ALF really wanted to burn the house down but settled instead for merely flooding the place. Nice.

This is the same ALF that PETA co-founder and President Ingrid Newkirk wrote about approvingly in her book Free the Animals! The Untold Story of the U.S. Animal Liberation Front and Its Founder, ‘Valerie’. According to Amazon.com, Newkirk "is one of the few people with firsthand knowledge of the ALF and is personally acquainted with the organization's founder." Furthermore, Newkirk:

…gives interviews to ALF’s publications, supports the legal defense efforts of ALF criminals (with PETA’s money), has been subpoenaed in regard to her ALF connections, and has even been accused in court documents of participation in the ALF arson of a Michigan State University research lab.

I think it’s safe to say that Newkirk would have approved of this recent terrorist attack on a scientist’s home. Newkirk is so strongly opposed to animal research that she has said:

even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, "we'd be against it"

So she’s uncompromisingly opposed to animal testing. Well, as it turns out, not so much. Not when she needs modern medicine, at any rate. You see, recently she broke her wrist:

Just as I was setting out to launch my new book, Let’s Have a Dog Party!, I met a wet floor and went splat, neatly snapping the bones in my wrist. Ooh, the pain! Thank goodness for IV drips.

Thank goodness for IV drips. IV drips. That would be those same intravenous anaesthetics that were tested on rats, rabbits, dogs, cats and monkeys. Apparently she’s not opposed to that animal testing. So unopposed that she thanks "goodness" for it.

Now, you may say, Newkirk didn’t have a choice in this matter, or that Newkirk believes animal testing was unnecessary to develop these medications and procedures. Well, if you think that, I’ll just refer you to PETA’s Animal Testing page, that unambiguously states:

Send back items that you have from companies that test on animals...

From the comments to the PETA blog, I think we can assume that Newkirk is now aware that her painkillers were, in fact, tested on animals. So can we assume that she will now refuse (“send back”) any more painkillers? Or will she, like PETA Vice President and insulin (tested on dogs, rabbits and mice) dependent diabetic Mary Beth Sweetland, continue to enjoy the benefits of animal testing while supporting terrorist acts on the scientists who provide them?

September 15, 2007

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has just been set up as a charity in the UK and the US. Read its mission statement, which begins:

I have just visited my local branch of Britain’s biggest bookshop chain, and this is what I found: six books on astronomy and nineteen books on astrology. The real science is outnumbered three to one by the pseudoscience.

A mission statement that starts like that has to be good. Anyway, if you’re stuck for a charity to give to, this one looks like a good one. Also see The OUT Campaign and get your T shirt.

September 05, 2007

I wasn’t going to do this again for a while. Comment on something on Dembski’s blog. Their standard is so lame. But I had to contradict this one as it represents a common misinterpretation of Occam’s Razor.

“In science, parsimony is preference for the least complex explanation for an observation. This is generally regarded as good when judging hypotheses. Occam’s razor also states the ‘principle of parsimony.’” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsimony

In the post below (”Multiverse of the Gaps”), I point to a recent paper in which a Darwinist attempts to get around the extremely small probability (less than 1 in 10 raised to the negative 1,018) of life emerging by chance by invoking an infinite “multiverse.”

The question for the class today is which is the most parsimonious hypothesis: One designer or infinite universes?

Answer: the multiverse is the more parsimonious. The mistake he’s making is in thinking that parsimony means the “least complex” or simplest explanation. Of course it doesn’t. If it meant choose the simplest explanation then Occam would always choose “Goddidit”. Because, what is simpler that “Goddidit”? No. Occam’s Razor means, don’t make stuff up. Or if you have to, make up as little as possible.

Suppose I have a cat. One night, I leave out a saucer of milk, and in the morning the milk has gone. No one saw who or what drank the milk. Lets say there are two possibilities:

1. The cat drank it

or

2. The milk fairy drank it

Occam tells us to reject option 2. This is because option 2 requires us to invent an unnecessary entity - the milk fairy. It is an invention because we have no evidence that the milk fairy exists. And it is unnecessary because there is a plausible explanation that does not require a milk fairy - the cat.

Note also that strictly speaking, both solutions are equally simple. The cat hypothesis is only simpler in that you haven't had to invent a new, unnecessary entity. Occam says that if you insist it could be the milk fairy, you have invented an unnecessary entity. And why would you do that?

So the answer to the original question is – it depends if there is any evidence for God, and if there is any evidence for the multiverse.

I haven’t seen any convincing evidence for God. Of course, the whole “extremely small probability” baloney is itself supposed to be the evidence for God – so we can’t include that or we’d be assuming the conclusion. It’s been debunked anyway. I’ll draw a blank on the evidence for God, then.

While I don’t think there is any hard evidence yet for the multiverse, I believe it is predicted by some of the math in string theory, and that the multiverse makes some predictions that may soon be testable. Astrophysicist Victor Stenger states:

No new hypothesis is needed to consider multiple universes. In fact, it takes an added hypothesis to rule them out-- a super law of nature that says only one universe can exist. But we know of no such law, so we would violate Occam's razor to insist on only one universe.

We know this universe exists. Why should there be no others? On the other hand, we don’t know God exists. While we currently can’t be sure, it seems to me that God is the milk fairy in my analogy. Just because I think that one of several million cats drank the milk, that doesn’t mean that it is more parsimonious to insist the milk fairy drank it.

August 06, 2007

The publisher of Matthew Alper’s The God Part of the Brain, sent me a copy to review. The premise of the book is that spiritual consciousness (and therefore belief in God), is an evolved trait. Alper argues that our self-conscious awareness, and with it the awareness of our own eventual death, meant that humans would have lived in a state of constant dread unless there was something that could relieve us of the painful effects of that awareness. He suggests that spirituality – and the belief that we continue to live after death – is the palliative mechanism without which our species might not have survived.

It’s an interesting idea, and one that sounds right to me. Not every atheist would necessarily agree. As I recall, Michael Shermer had a slightly different take – I believe he suggested that religion was a way of “enforcing” acceptable rules of conduct necessary for group living. (I could be wrong – it is a while since I was at that talk.) Also I know that PZ Myers really doubts that religion is an adaptive trait. Still, I like the idea. Which is why I was so disappointed that this book doesn’t really make the case.

I was pretty much turned off the book from chapter 3 – “A Very Brief History of Time – which is a description of how we got here, from the big bang, through the formation of stars and planets, the possible way life may have started, and the subsequent evolution to the life we see today. It was a good idea to lay it all out like this, and it would be a useful read for someone not familiar with all the steps. It was let down by the numerous factual errors it contained.

My first “What?” moment occurred only four paragraphs in (page 26), where Alper explains Einstein’s E=mc2equation:

What this essentially means is that if mass (matter) is accelerated to a high speed, it will become energy. Inversely, should energy be slowed down, it will settle into matter.

Which is of course nonsense. I can only assume that Alper thinks that since the equation includes the speed of light (“c”), this means matter has to be accelerated to a high speed (presumably close to light speed), to be converted to energy. But that is not what it means at all – “c” is just the ratio of conversion from matter to energy. You convert matter to energy by (for example) splitting an atom, not by speeding it up. (Also, how do you slow energy down? What does that even mean?) That had me shaking my head for a bit.

More serious, considering the premise of the book is to explain spirituality through evolution, was his rather startling errors in describing aspects of evolutionary theory. The explanations of natural selection were pretty good. But he goes off the rails on page 41 when he writes about punctuated equilibria:

Other times, a beneficial mutation emerges that is so dramatically different from its peers that a species can be transformed within a few generations…

Then on the next page Alper describes genetic drift. Strangely he seems to think it occurs when members of a species migrate to a new area and are isolated from the rest of the species. While small populations are more prone to it, I’m pretty sure genetic drift occurs in all populations, and isolation from the herd is not necessary. But the major and I mean MAJOR error he makes here is in the example he gives for genetic drift – Darwin’s finches. But Darwin’s finches are an example of natural selection, not genetic drift. I actually read this section about five or six times to be sure this was what he was saying, it was so wrong. The errors in this section are so serious and basic that they really need to be cleaned up in any future editions. More to the point, it caused me to doubt the statements of facts and interpretations of data elsewhere in the book, when he was describing things I was less familiar with.

Most of the rest of the book is given over to numerous detailed logical arguments for why all traits must be evolved traits (all planarians turn to the light, all bees build hexagonal hives, all cats meow, etc). He makes a reasonable case although I found the writing style ponderous and repetitive. Unfortunately, although he makes a perfectly logical case to explain how God-belief could have evolved, he offers no actual evidence to support it. In fact you get to page 130 before he even promises that:

In the remaining chapters, I will provide … the most recent neurophysiological and genetic research that supports [the book’s] hypothesis.

But the rest of the book is mostly more of the same logical (and repetitive) arguments (planarians again, honey bees again), with virtually no actual experimental evidence. The most interesting part of the book, in my view, was the short section from page 136 where he describes the work of scientists (such as VS Ramachandran), that reveal an individual’s behavior can change in specific ways following the alteration of specific parts of the brain. In my view this section should have been longer, and with more references to the actual research. This brief section did actually seem to support the idea that “God” resides in a specific part of the physical brain and is not a product of any outside agency. (Paging Michael Egnor. Michael Egnor to the house phone.) Unfortunately it was too short and didn’t touch on the specific reasons Alper claims for the evolution of God-belief.

I really wanted to like this book, and I do think its main premise – that God belief evolved as a way of coping – may be true. But this book offers zero experimental evidence to support the case. The book might be useful to explain the widespread belief in God without proposing that God actually exists. But the factual errors in describing evolution need to be corrected before I could recommend it.

July 16, 2007

Via Pharyngula I learn that William Dembski has examined the math behind the 1 in 600 odds quoted in James Cameron’s The Jesus Tomb, and found it wanting. Well thanks for filling us in Bill. A bit late though. I wrote The Lost Tomb of Jesus (Not) over four months ago where I pointed out that the math didn’t show what Cameron claimed, and the statistician featured in the film backtracked on the film’s claims two days afterwards. (Coincidence? You decide.) Still, it’s good to see that Dembski has caught up with the rest of us. Now, if he could only apply this degree of skepticism to his pseudo-scientific Intelligent Design belief - really just an argument from ignorance… Yes I know – but I can dream.

Dembski’s post did puzzle me a little though. He seems to think that most skeptics “until just recently… didn’t even think that Jesus existed.” Speaking personally, I always thought that there most likely was a real “Yeshua” upon whose life the Christian myths were based; I just never believed the fairy-tale version of events described in the Gospels. But really, it’s of little concern to me whether he really existed or not (other than as an intellectual exercise), and I suspect the same is true for most non-believers, so I’m not sure why Dembski thinks he’s made such a killer point.

Dembski did issue one interesting challenge with the sort of odds I like:

Question: You think any of the skeptic societies might be interested in highlighting this work debunking the Jesus Family Tomb people? I’ll give 10 to 1 odds that they won’t.

The premise behind this is telling. As someone who first formed his beliefs and then went looking for evidence to support them (while ignoring contradictory evidence), he can’t conceive that a skeptic would honestly consider evidence that would challenge the skeptic’s position. (Even though this doesn’t actually even do that.)

Anyway, I’m not a skeptic society, but this is a skeptic blog, so perhaps I count. In the hope that I do, allow me to highlight Dembski’s work debunking the Jesus Family Tomb. 10 to 1 odds. What was the bet again? $1,000 you say? I’ll take a check. Please don’t wait another four months before sending it.

July 15, 2007

And email about it. I received an email from Reed Esau, one of the organizers of this skeptics conference in Denver on August 3 to 4 this year. Reed tells me:

It ain't your typical affair.

The format is based on Barcamp, a gathering where most participants give presentations. It's supported by local sponsors and free to attendees.

Should it prove successful, we hope that like Barcamp, similar events will be spontaneously organized around the world by passion skeptics as ourselves.

I’d never heard of Barcamp, but the idea seems to be that it’s a conference on a given subject (and with this conference the subject is skepticism) – with the key feature being that everyone has to participate. No spectators. If you live in the area and always wanted to present something about skepticism but haven’t been asked – here’s your chance.

April 12, 2007

First, the statistician who was quoted giving the 600 to 1 odds that this really was Jesus’ tomb (ie that Jesus), has clarified what he really meant:

The most startling change of opinion featured in the 16-page paper is that of University of Toronto statistician Professor Andrey Feuerverger, who stated those 600 to one odds in the film. Feuerverger now says that these referred to the probability of a cluster of such names appearing together.

Pfann's paper reported that a statement on the Discovery Channel's Web site, which previously read "a statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters...concludes that the probability factor is 600 to 1 in favor of this being the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family," in keeping with Feuerverger's statement, has been altered and now reads, "a statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters... concludes that the probability factor is in the order of 600 to 1 that an equally 'surprising' cluster of names would arise purely by chance under given assumptions." [My bold.]

As I wrote in March, the 1 in 600 probability is not 1 in 600 that this is the tomb of Jesus. It is a 1 in 600 probability that there would be a tomb with these exact four names, or an even closer match to Jesus’ family, in one of the 1,000 tombs found so far.

The DNA scientist quoted in the film is also backtracking:

Dr. Carney Matheson, who supervised DNA testing carried out for the film from the supposed Jesus and Mary Magdalene ossuaries, and who said in the documentary that "these two individuals, if they were unrelated, would most likely be husband and wife," later said that "the only conclusions we made were that these two sets were not maternally related. To me, it sounds like absolutely nothing."

Well Duh. As I wrote, she doesn’t have to be Yeshua’s wife. She could be the wife of one of the other three named men, or of any man in one of the four unnamed ossuaries, or the daughter of any of the other nine in the tomb.

And finally, the experts who interpreted the text on the ossuaries is also backtracking:

…a specialist in ancient apocryphal text, Professor Francois Bovon, who is quoted in the film as saying the enigmatic ossuary inscription "Mariamne" is the same woman known as Mary Magdalene - one of the filmmakers' critical arguments - issued a disclaimer stating that he did not believe that "Mariamne" stood for Mary of Magdalene at all.

March 10, 2007

A week ago, “Titanic” director James Cameron and journalist Simcha Jacobovici released a TV film called “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”. If you haven't heard of the film you can visit the Discovery Channel for the details.

You know this is going to be a serious film when right at the beginning they tell you, in all upper case: THIS FILM CONTAINS RECONSTRUCTIONS. Well thanks for the information, because without that, I might have thought they’d found some actual original first century film footage or something. Oh I see – you got some actors to reconstruct some scenes you think happened. Thanks for clearing that up. Perhaps all these reconstructions, plus the stuff they included that was totally unnecessary (eg filming the wrong tomb), were the reason this epic lasted for two hours. With some editing it could easily have been reduced to under an hour without omitting anything important. Still, what would you expect from someone who made a three and a half hour film of a ship sinking?

Who’s Buried in Jesus’s Tomb?

As it turns out, that’s not such an easy question to answer. Here’s the thing. If some future archaeologist found a tomb containing the names John, Paul and George, he wouldn’t necessarily get too excited. However, if he found a tomb containing the names John, Paul, George and Ringo – he might be excused for thinking he had found the lost burial place of The Beatles. The filmmakers think they found the tomb with (by analogy) all four members of The Beatles – ie the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth including his “wife”, Mary Magdalene. The important question though is: did Cameron and Jacobovici really discover the lost tomb of the Messiah and his wife, or are they both just very naughty boys? To answer that question you have to examine the statistics – specifically the 1 in 600 claim.

(Note: when I refer to “Jesus” in this post, I mean the Jesus of the New Testament. By “Yeshua bar Yehosef” I mean the (alleged), inscription on the ossuary that translates to “Jesus son of Joseph”.)

One in 600!

Here are the probabilities that the filmmakers gave us for each of the four names found in the tomb.

Yeshua bar Yehosef (Jesus Son of Joseph) - 1 in 190

Maria (Mary) - 1 in 4

Mariamene e Mara (possibly “Mary Magdalene”) - 1 in 160

Yose (a diminutive of Joseph, Jesus’s brother) - 1 in 20

They then showed some simple math that they said meant this was Jesus’s tomb with odds of 600 to1 in favor. The calculation was as follows:

Unfortunately this math is almost certainly wrong. First, you don’t multiply probabilities the way they do in the film. If you don’t believe me, think of this: there were six named ossuaries in the tomb. Imagine if there had been 60, or 600 or 6,000. Hey, let’s imagine there were six million ossuaries in the tomb. With that number you would be certain to find probably hundreds of examples of each of the four names listed above, but with the math they’re using they would still show only a 1 in 600 probability of them occurring! Clearly absurd. Then there was a division by 4 to adjust for “unintentional historical biases”. This doesn’t seem to relate to any standard “bias adjustment” I can find a reference for. In fact, I think the filmmakers simply made it up. We know this because the film’s statistician Dr Andrey Feuerverger has just posted a clarification (and listed assumptions – more of them below), and was interviewed by Scientific American on these very statistics. If you read those two links you’ll see that although he did originate the 1 in 600 figure, his calculations were not the ones shown in the film. Apparently the filmmakers didn’t think the actual math used by Feuerverger was important, just as long as they showed an equation that agreed with his end figure. Naughty boys!

Feuerverger is preparing a paper for peer review, and until then we cannot know exactly how he calculated the 1 in 600 number, although I presume he knows what he’s doing. (More so than the filmmakers, anyway.) However, we know many of his assumptions – specifically that he seems to have used the probabilities of the names as listed above (or pretty close in most cases). As Feuerverger himself says, the computations are highly dependent on the assumptions that enter into it, so the assumptions are where we should look.

Something About Mary

You should understand one thing the filmmakers are muddled about. It’s this: the 1 in 600 probability is not 1 in 600 that this is the tomb of Jesus. It is a 1 in 600 probability that there would be a tomb with these exact four names, or an even closer match to Jesus’s family, in one of the 1,000 tombs found so far. The filmmakers’ assumption is therefore that these four names (or an even more specific group) would be the ones you would expect to find in Jesus’s tomb. Hold that thought for a minute.

We would expect Jesus’s family tomb to contain a Yeshua, a Maria etc. However, we would not expect a Mary Magdalene since there are no records that she was in Jesus’s family. In other words, she is not the “Ringo” of The Beatles analogy, because although we know Ringo was in The Beatles, we don’t know Mary Magdalene was in Jesus’s family. The filmmakers just assume Mary Magdalene was in Jesus’s family and they include the low probability of this (I in 160) as part of the 1 in 600 calculation. But Mary Magdalene being in Jesus’s family is also a conclusion they draw from the 1 in 600 odds. That means they are assuming their conclusion – the definition of circular reasoning. The 1 in 160 odds of Mariamene must therefore be taken out of the calculation.

Now, you might say that Jesus knew Mary Magdalene, and so she might be in the tomb. For example, if the inscription had unambiguously read “Mary of Magdala”, you might want to include the odds of this in the calculation. This would still, strictly speaking, be circular, but you could perhaps make a case. But this would only be worth even considering if “Mariamene e Mara” has to be Mary Magdalene. Not only can you not say this, but on the contrary few scholars even think “Mariamene e Mara” could be Mary Magdalene, who is always referred to as “Maria” in first century documents. The filmmakers slyly slip in the information that according to the Acts of Philip, Mary Magdalene was known as “Mariamene”. The difficulties with this are that (1) the information presented in the Acts of Philip are questionable at best and (2) the “Mary Magdalene” interpretation of this questionable document is actually just the speculation of one person - Francis Bovon – and not generally accepted by other scholars. The filmmakers engage in speculation about the “e Mara” part too. There is really no reason to suppose “Mariamene e Mara” is Mary Magdalene and/or should be in Jesus’s tomb at all.

What would the revised odds be when we remove Mariamene from the mix? It’s hard to say, since we don’t have Feuerverger’s actual calculations, although if you use the formula described in the film you arrive at just under 4 to 1.

If that wasn’t enough, scholars such as Ben Witherington even have doubts about the accuracy of the translations and the historical fit of the other three names. I’ll just quote one example – numerous sources state that Jesus was never referred to as “bar Yehosef” (son of Joseph). That alone, if true, would sink the whole “Jesus’s tomb” claim.

In summary – statistics don’t support the filmmakers’ conclusions.

Neither does the supposed DNA “evidence”. The mitochondrial DNA information they make such a song and dance about only shows that Yeshua bar Yehosef and Mariamene were not maternally related. But she doesn’t have to be Yeshua’s wife. She could be the wife of one of the other three named men, or of any man in one of the four unnamed ossuaries, or the daughter of any of the other nine in the tomb. And that’s if the DNA is even from the former inhabitants of the ossuaries, and some experts even doubt that. In summary, the DNA evidence is worthless too.

Britney, not Ringo

It's as if our future archaeologist had found a tomb with the names John, Paul, George and Britney, calculated the really small odds (say 1 in 600) that these four names would appear together randomly, and concluded that (with odds of 600 to 1), Britney Spears, and not Ringo Starr, was the drummer in The Beatles! In fact it’s worse than that: the “Britney” inscription isn’t even Britney Spears.

In the program that followed, Jacobovici defended his film along the lines of “the film was just to get a debate started”. In other words, he’s not really saying this is Jesus’s tomb, he’s only trying to get the scholars interested in examining the evidence. Considering the way the 1 in 600 data and DNA conclusions were presented, and considering the numerous “reconstructions”, I think he was being disingenuous. He presented the film the way he did because if he had made a film that said “very small probability we found the tomb of Jesus”, no one would have shown it. So yes, I think Cameron and Jacobovici were very naughty boys indeed. Perhaps we shouldn’t blame them too much – they’re only filmmakers. But this exercise demonstrates why we should look to peer reviewed scientific literature, and not TV films, to answer scientific questions.

I’ll end with a joke.

One day while Jesus was out walking, he came upon a group of people who were about to stone an adulteress to death. Jesus stopped them, saying "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone". The crowd, chastised, starts to disperse, until an old lady at the back of the crowd suddenly throws a large rock, hitting the adulteress on the head, killing her instantly. Jesus turns to the woman and says, "Mother - sometimes you really piss me off".

Another ossuary has the name "Miriamne Mara". They speculate that this might be Mary Magdalene's, despite it not saying "Magdalene", because MM might have been a master ("Mara") and preacher. Extensive confabulations follow.

[…]

They extracted mitochondrial DNA from bone fragments in the ossuaries. The mito DNA from the Jesus ossuary and the Miriamne Mara ossuary don't match—which is what you'd expect if it were Jesus and Mary Magdalene (they are not maternally related!) It's also what you'd expect if it were a family tomb, and they were husband and wife. Therefore, they speculate for a while that Mary Magdalene and Jesus must have actually been married to one another! It's an awful lot to spin from a lack of a DNA match.

[…]

Patina analysis shows that the James ossuary probably came from the same tomb as the Jesus/Mary/ Miramne/ Matthew/Jose group. Uh, they don't seem to care that they've just linked their inscribed ossuaries to a known forged ossuary inscription.

I still have it to watch on my DVR and was going to write my own review later this week. I’ll see – if it’s as unimpressive as PZ says, and I don’t have anything else to add, I may not bother.

February 07, 2007

I was reminded of that Michael Shermer quote recently while engaging in a debate in the comments of this post on the Whirled Musings blog. The exchange below demonstrates that just because someone laughs at one form of woo, he or she can still believe in another form of woo if they don’t apply critical thinking uniformly. The method by which you arrive at your conclusions is, if anything, more important than the conclusion itself.

I became aware of the Whirled blog post via my Google alert for Gregg Braden. Whirled seems to exist to make fun of new age bozos such as Braden, Deepak Chopra etc, and so I posted a comment supportive of the Braden post, with a link back to the Skeptico site. A couple of people checked out my site and chose to post comments critical of my posts on acupuncture. Critical and a little snippy, I might add. Well, they have a right to do that, I suppose, although I wasn’t looking for a debate on acupuncture when I commented about Gregg Braden. Still, if they’re going to criticize me, I’ll respond, as you’ll see if you click the link.

The trouble is, although the owner and regulars at the Whirled blog like to make fun of Braden, Chopra etc (and posts they don’t like at Skeptico), it’s clear that you’re not supposed to question their irrational beliefs. A poster called RevRon’s Rants, apparently the “life partner” of the blog owner Connie, posted that my “summary dismissal of acupuncture just doesn't wash”, and that “it would be advisable to ensure [your] "science" stands up to scrutiny, IMHO”. Ron subsequently (after being asked by me) posted links to some studies. I explained why these studies did not invalidate my original posts, and posted links to scientific studies that had led me to my conclusions about acupuncture. Ron ignored my criticisms of his studies, ignored the studies I linked, and instead fell back on the fallacious reasoning we’re all used to seeing from the numerous woos who post here and elswhere. For example, in short order I was presented with:

Just about everything but any science that “stands up to scrutiny”, as Ron had put it. Clearly “stands up to scrutiny” really just means “supports my prejudice”. Fair enough – he’s free to say what he wants and I‘m free to explain the fallacies he’s relying on.

Or not. Unfortunately the blog owner refused to allow my reply to the latest piece of drivel from Ron, with the justification (via email) that her blog is “a mostly lighthearted, humorous blog”, and that the discussion had turned into “a pissing contest”. The blog owner was apparently especially annoyed at my comparing Ron to Deepak Chopra, because apparently Ron is not like that. Well sorry Connie, Ron is like that when it comes to his belief in acupuncture. And he started the pissing contest, not me.

See below, my final comment that Connie didn’t want to publish. Ron’s comments are indented. My censored replies follow. Ron's first sentence is in response to my comment, "I don’t see any reason to believe “qi” even exists":

Spend a week in a classical dojo and see if you can say that.

Oh come on, personal experience does not make data, and the easiest person to fool is yourself – that’s why the double-blind study has proven priceless. Before double blind studies we used to think a lot of things were true that we now know are not. Wake up.

…or that matter, do some research somewhere besides sources devoted to perpetuating your own preconceptions.

Advice you would do well to take yourself.

But there's a big difference between skepticism and closed-mindnedness, and between believing everything and believing nothing at all. It's in that place where objectivity - and human growth - exists.

Oh no, not the fallacious appeal to be open-minded. An open mind is open to all ideas, but it must be open to the possibility that the idea could be true or false. It is not closed-minded to reject claims that make no sense, but if you can’t accept the possibility that an idea such as qi might be false, then you are the closed minded one.

Closed-mindedness indeed. You have now used just about every lame argument I have heard over the years from new agers, creationists and other miscellaneous anti-scientists defending their drivel – you’re no better than any of them. I wrote my fallacies section because I got sick of refuting the same tired arguments again and again. The trouble is, you’ve got it fixed in your head that acupuncture has worked for you and you can’t even begin to think rationally about it. Read this article by Michael Shermer - he was writing about major new age bozo Deepak Chopra, but he could just as easily have written it about you:

“… another refrain we often hear in the form of “I’m a skeptic too, but…,” where skepticism is fine as long as it is someone else’s codswallop under the microscope.”

Precisely.

[Censored comment ends.]

Confrontational? Sure. But no more than was I was receiving. And in an argument I didn’t start,remember.

Sadly, it seems we have here a group of people who are happy to make fun of Deepak Chopra when they want, but who presumably didn’t arrived at their views on Chopra through the application of critical thinking. I’m not surprised they are teed-off at my comparing them to Chopra. I’d be annoyed too. But the correct response would be to reevaluate your own arguments, and re-couch them with valid arguments in place of the dopey rationalizations of the kind favored by Chopra and his followers. Readers of Whirled would apparently prefer simply to disallow arguments against them they don’t like.

The method by which you evaluate claims is as important as the conclusions you arrive at. Maybe more so – if you have the wrong method, you will come to the wrong conclusions on some questions. Sadly, Whirled may be an anti-new age blog, but it’s clearly not a critical thinking blog.

Of course, anyone may disagree by commenting below. I don’t hold comments for evaluation or censor people purely because they disagree with me. But I do call out fallacious reasoning.

February 02, 2007

Tomorrow, February 3rd, will be the two-year anniversary of this blog. Skeptico is still going after two years, although not posting at the same rate as the first year. I’m currently getting 1,000 to 1,500 visitors a weekday, and just over half a million visitors in total (as of last Monday). Admittedly, that’s not as many as somepeople, but it’s not bad. The most read post is still my review of What The Bleep Do We Know!?, from April of 2005.

At the one year anniversary last year I posted Why did the chicken cross the road? – a retrospective of the bozos liars and frauds we met during that year. As this turned out to be a popular post, I decided to do the same again this year. I haven’t repeated the first year’s names, although many of their answers still apply. (If you want to read last year’s list, just click the link above.) There are a few who, through their continued stupidity, warranted revised entries. Most of them are new though.

So again, in honor of Skeptico’s blog birthday, and for your Friday amusement, I present Why did the chicken re-cross the road?

It comes as a splash of cold water to realize that science doesn't really know what the answer to this question actually is. This sounds like a rash claim, but the mystery is there for all to see. This proves we should be using our own mind and body as healing agents. (Buy my book.)

The Society continues with its aim of understanding events and abilities commonly described as 'crossing roads' by promoting and supporting important research in this area. One day we’ll have an answer. Give us time - we’ve only been working on it for 125 years.

The public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak without moral consequences, and so chickens cross the road for no inherent reason.

The truth of the matter is that there is simply no NEED for chickens to cross roads. Why? Because there is currently more than enough food on this side of the road, and if not the rest can starve anyway.

To truly look deeply at the work of Gregg Braden, past all the scientific analysis, the left brain analytical details and past its own scepticism, to reach a place we call compassion. Why are you so angry?

You speak as if you claim to know exactly why chickens cross roads, or why they don’t, or even that you can know. You don't, anymore than me. You call things proven, because they cross a road. I have room in my mind for mystery, for that which is intangible, and has none of your proof.

The chicken is right .... you people are uninformed voices. I am very pleased that the chicken is smart enough not to engage with those who do not want to know the truth about crossing roads. Do some reading and become informed - just don’t expect me to explain what you are uninformed about.

January 30, 2007

Tonight, Randi will be on Anderson Cooper Live. The show starts at 10:00 PM EST. A missing person's case and missing identity. "360°" takes you inside the mind of a con woman. What makes her tick? Watch tonight 10 ET.

The year, of course, is the time it takes for the Earth to orbit the Sun, right? Well, not exactly. It depends on what you mean by "year", and how you measure it. This takes a wee bit of explaining, so put down the champagne, take the lampshade off your head, and hang on.

Phil gives a really good explanation of the astronomical factors at play – and it’s not as simple as most people think. Of course, the Earth’s “wobble”, and the resulting difference between the sidereal and the tropical year is the reason that most astrological charts, and therefore your sun sign used by most astrologers, is wrong. Not that it would make any difference if astrologers used the sidereal instead of the tropical zodiac – astrology is crap either way.

ANDREW WAKEFIELD, the former surgeon whose campaign linking the MMR vaccine with autism caused a collapse in immunisation rates, was paid more than £400,000 [$780,000] by lawyers trying to prove that the vaccine was unsafe.

Of course, the fact that he was paid does not in and of itself prove Wakefield was wrong, although the conflict of interest clearly means we should examine his data more skeptically. However, the anti-vax crowd routinely use this kind of conflict of interest to smear anyone who disagrees with their position. It will be instructive to see how they handle this piece of news.

Next, John Lynch of Give Seed, Get Seed Stranger Fruit gives us ID in 2007 - from the horses mouth – a list of developments in ID that we almost certainly won’t be seeing. My favorite:

A theory of how the Designer-Who-Shall-Not-Be- Named did the designing.

And what a great year for scares. The Times reported on its front page that cocaine use among schoolchildren had doubled when it had done nothing of the sort (they simply misinterpreted the report). The media’s anti-MMR campaign continued unabated as the Telegraph, Mail and Times all reported on unpublished research claiming to show a link between the vaccine and autism, even though the research was from a man with a history of making such claims as far back as 2002, which he still hasn’t published. Over the year, at least two fully published studies showing a negative result for almost the exact same experiment were inexplicably ignored by all newspapers.

September 15, 2006

So was reported by Stephen Judd on his Spleen blog last year, anyway. Apparently this little piece of cardboard fits inside your cell phone and protects you against electro-magnetic fields. Judd took down their absurd claims line by line.

Well, reader Chelfyn alerted me to the apparent fact that the makers of this piece of junk have warned Judd he has 21 days to remove what he wrote about it from his blog or face unspecified legal action in New Zealand. That would seem to be a shame, since his piece looked pretty on the money to me. So just in case Judd does have to remove it, I thought I would reproduce his piece below for posterity. Perhaps some other skeptical bloggers could do the same – I’m sure Andron would love the extra publicity and it’ll be interesting to see how many new countries their private dick will have to travel to with his threatening letters. Here goes:

cellphones and androntech

What do these guys do?

According to them, they "distributes the Shield Me TM Electro-Magnetic Field 'earthing' card designed to safeguard cell phone users from the electro-magnetic field of their cell phones". According to me, they sell you useless cardboard cutouts for $45 each. Through my local chemist, no less.

Here are some claims they make, and my take on them.

"The card has been independently tested..."

The independent testing comprises Kirlian photography and session with an electroacupuncture machine using one subject. Even if the photography or electroacupuncture machines were not bullshit (they are, and we could have a separate and entertaining post on the history of bogus medical machinery), the experiment is not double blind, and has a sample of one. A properly designed experiment would comprise multiple trials, would conceal from the operator of the equipment whether the cellphone was equipped with an Andron Shield Me card or not, would conceal whether the phone was on or not, and would use multiple subjects.

Furthermore, since the claim is that the card reduces EMF from the phone, a more appropriate test would be to use an standard meter for radio waves (such as an RF strength meter) (or something to measure magnetic fields, like a Gauss meter) on the cellphone itself. Position the meter next to the phone, and measure the signal with and without the card. I wonder why they didn't do that?

"and has been developed by a leading scientist and international health practitioner."

The inventor is not a scientist. The inventor has a bachelor's degree in science and a degree in naturopathy. I note that an earlier version of the website listed Mr Corcoran's qualifications, but they have been removed. Judging by Google results he also has published some interesting pseudoscience, eg a new theory of a light and gravity, which alas has not met with the approbation of actual physicists.

"the Shield MeTM card's matrix is specifically programmed to earth the electro-magnetic field of a cell phone in the cell phone so that it does not earth itself through the head and body."

You cannot use an isolated cardboard sheet to earth microwaves. Nor can you program it. Note that when I viewed their site several weeks ago, it stated that the card was a "programmed cellulose matrix", which is why I refer to it as "cardboard". I note they have since removed the word "cellulose". However, they still advise not getting it wet or exposing it to extreme heat, which seems wise and is perhaps the only really truthful statement about the product.

This disgusts me.

First, most punters don't have enough basic science to tell that this is bullshit, and these guys are taking advantage.

Second, my chemist, who is allegedly a health professional with a university degree in pharmacy, has the gall to sell this as a remedy. I am aware that chemists sell a lot of things that don't work because the public demand them, but $45 pieces of cardboard seem particularly outrageous.

Third, it seems as though actual science in NZ is going down the toilet, so this is especially depressing.

Folks, if you want an equally effective system to protect yourself from your cellphone, I suggest you print out this post, fold it up and wedge it inside your phone. It will work just as well. You can send me $45 if you like too.

August 07, 2006

It seems to me woos are increasingly relying on psychobabble – “language characterized by the often inaccurate use of jargon from psychiatry and psychotherapy” – in place of the actual arguments they don’t have. This post is the first where I examine this form of “argument” – this time from someone who left a couple of (off topic) comments to my Astrology Challenge. (A second example will follow in a day or so.) I do so because (1) it amuses me, but also (2) I think it’s instructive to deconstruct these highly manipulative but ultimately fallacious arguments.

The commenter goes by the name of Kaz. He left this comment that I replied to. He then replied with another long comment that I deleted from the Astrology Challenge as being off topic. (Why do people have such a problem understanding what I am asking for in the Astrology Challenge? Oh well.) His comment is repeated below in its entirety, with my analysis and rebuttals. Here goes:

I really just want to write you a note, as one skeptic/atheist to another.

Kaz may be an atheist, but he is no skeptic. On his Simple Horse blog he states “I'm … an acupuncturist/alchemist by night, and am available for consultations at [phone number]”. I don’t know what he means by an alchemist (although it sounds totally woo), but an acupuncturist? If you real my numerous post on acupuncture you would know it’s mostly placebo. Kaz is no skeptic; he just doesn’t believe in astrology. But a skeptic is not someone who just doesn’t believe in a woo subject like astrology. A skeptic is one who arrives at such a position through the application of critical thinking – reason, logic and the scientific method. And, unlike Kaz, a skeptic doesn’t rely on fallacious reasoning:

I was just trying to point out gently that even if astrology is bogus, it has a natural history that consists of many generations of people - astronomers, astrologers, in the not so distant past these were one and the same - trying to make sense of the world. (Since you seem to like books and references, I will refer you to Richard Grossinger's excellent "The Night Sky"). So the rules of astrology weren't "just made up;" they were accumulated over millennia by people trying to impose meaning on a meaningless universe. It's just that at some point after Newton (who was heavily into the esoteric woo-woo stuff), most scientists discarded the obviously outdated baggage and moved on from astrology to astronomy.

This is the fallacy of equivocation that I wrote about before. Astronomy is not the same as astrology, even if they were practiced by the same people centuries ago. It’s completely irrelevant to whether the rules of astrology were made-up or derived.

But I don't think I need to explain that to you, who know so well the human need to try to understand things. You have seized on reason as the weapon that makes you right every time. Others seize on God.

Of course, science doesn’t make anyone “right every time”, it is just the most reliable method we have for explaining how things are. It’s true that with reason and science I will probably be right more often than people who rely on other ways of knowing. But that isn’t what I want to focus on. The point is, it is here that the psychobabble starts. Note the interesting wording: “the weapon that makes you right every time”. Kaz has reversed the order of things. His argument goes that I have decided astrology is bogus, and have a need to be right about this. I have chosen reason as the weapon to back up my pre-conceived belief - to “make me right”. The corollary is I am “making wrong” anyone who disagrees with me – clearly a pejorative action. It is expressed this way so that it appears my “need” to be right is a weakness, and “reason” is my “weapon” to cover up this weakness. But he has it exactly back to front – it was by using reason and science that I determined astrology was nonsense, not the other way round. Of course, I am trying to find out what is “right” – that is the purpose of critical thinking – but it is not to “make [me] right”, it is to arrive at what is right. That is the crucial distinction that Kaz has (ironically) wrong.

The reason I go into this in so much detail is that I have noticed this type of reasoning – skeptics have a need to be right etc - is utilized a lot by woos to put skeptics down and obscure the fact that the woo has nothing to justify his claim. I’m not sure where it comes from, although I suspect it’s an argument used in woo circles that sounds good so is picked up and repeated without much (any) thought. It’s classic psychobabble. It’s certainly highly manipulative and as used here is fallacious.

Speaking of which, I find that you are a little too quick to call your readers' comments "moronic" etc. Your strident tone reminds me of fundamentalist Muslims and others who have "seen the light" and have a very low tolerance for other people's opinions. You mention that you once believed in astrology. Did you have some kind of conversion experience that left you the strident rationalist that you are now?

Here we have another fallacy - the false analogy. I don’t insist people accept my views on astrology the way that religious fundamentalists insist the world adheres to their religious beliefs. Anyone is welcome to practice astrology to their heart’s content as long as it doesn’t directly affect me (as for example, when a US President consults an astrologer before making decisions). I just post facts about astrology on this blog and ask proponents who visit this site to answer questions and justify their silly beliefs. This is a blog set up to promote critical thinking, so if you’re going to post claims on this blog I am going to ask you to back them up. You can go away and do whatever you want – just don’t expect me to believe in your nonsense.

Finally, re: astrologers vs skeptics, I challenge you to demonstrate why "it matters if it's right or wrong." Or to make it a little easier for you, why you think it's so important, indeed why you even have this website. Will the sky come tumbling down because people believe in astrology? Will an eventual human extinction be avoided because a critical mass of humanity embraced rationality and skepticism a la Skeptico? I severely doubt it. So why does it matter? I think this question gets to the crux of why Skeptico is such an angry and vehement rationalist.

My “moronic” comment was in response to Kaz’s claim “It doesn't matter whether you or the astrologers are right or wrong”. Well, of course it matters. If someone makes decisions based on astrology it matters if astrology is right or not. But it is wider than that. This blog was set up to promote critical thinking – to demonstrate how to apply critical thinking and the scientific method to evaluate claims. If it doesn’t matter if the conclusions of critical thinking are right or wrong then it doesn’t matter if you use critical thinking or not. So for example, it doesn’t matter if an alternative therapy will cure your cancer or not – you may as well take the altie therapy even if in reality you will die without the evidence-based therapy.

Yes, saying it doesn’t matter if something is right or wrong is moronic. And if you disagree then I have a bridge to sell you. Bring your check book.

I am no proponent of astrology, so I will stop here and leave space for those astrologers who wish to enter into verbal fisticuffs with you. But really, why are you so invested in being right? Why the need to lash out at anyone who so much as slightly disagrees with you? I think you should consider the possibility that there are some not-so-rational reasons for your insistent position, and that some psychotherapy, astrological or otherwise, might be in order.

Again note the psychobabble – I am “invested” in being right. “Invested” – an interesting word, implying I have a need to be right – I wouldn’t want to give up an “investment” after all. But as I pointed out earlier, rationality leads me to the right answer, I do not start with an answer that I have “invested” as being right. But the fact that Kaz thinks this is a good argument implies that is the way his mind works – he is invested in this discussion for some reason. So much so he has a need to post a second 400 plus word comment on astrology. Pretty funny for someone who doesn’t believe in it and who claims I have an “insistent position” that might need therapy to sort out. I think he's talking about himself.

April 01, 2006

Reader woly sent me this link to Pherotones – apparently these people are selling ring tones for your phone that they claim act like pheromones to attract the opposite sex:

Can one ringtone make you irresistible?

Are you ready to unlock your sexual potential in an adventure of self-discovery through untamed passion and incredible pleasure? If you said “Yes,” then you’re ready for Pherotones, the ringtone secret that can make you irresistible to the opposite sex. Click on these absolutely free Pherotones and listen for yourself.

So what evidence do they have to back up their claims? Well, it’s just the usual bunch testimonials dressed up with pseudo-scientific language and lame appeals to science doesn’t know everything. Get a load of this from How Pherotones Work:

Modern science has only begun to unlock the secrets of the human brain. While making great strides in mapping the neural pathways and chemical triggers that incite various moods and behaviors, mainstream scientists have yet to grasp exactly what makes human beings, and their brains, tick.

Scientists don’t know everything about the brain so Pherotones work. I’m convinced. And of course the establishment wants to keep it secret:

Pherotones are presently too controversial and too hot for mainstream science. Established scientists, with their cushy university jobs, are afraid to probe the secrets of Pherotones too deeply, lest they offend the sensibilities of their colleagues. Only a brave few have dared to publish their Pherotone findings.

In reality, any scientist would jump at the chance to prove something like this works, if it did. The best evidence they have for this stuff is this lame video which I find hard to believe wasn’t faked (you have to watch it to the end to see what I mean). Who do they think they’re fooling?

March 18, 2006

I noticed this advertisement in this week’s Economist, repeated on Shell’s “Global Technical Careers” website:

"You only use 10% of your brain"? I find it surprising that a high tech company advertising for technical people should propagate this old myth.

...attempts to map out the cerebral cortex, the center of the higher mental functions, have not found large areas that don't do anything. The general view is that the brain is too small (just three pounds), uses too many resources (20 percent of body oxygen utilization though it accounts for just 2 percent of weight), and has too much to do for 90 percent of it to be completely comatose.

Funny – I’d have thought that a firm like Shell would want people who could use all their brains. Or perhaps it’s just the people in recruiting who only use 10% of their brains. Still, it’s good news for engineers with 90% less brain than their peers – a career awaits you at Shell. As the ad says – “make a difference”. Indeed.

February 25, 2006

The people at Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) are fond of spotting “anomalies” in data and suggesting they may have detected global human consciousness acting in concert. I recently detected an anomaly in the site traffic for this blog, timed exactly at its birthday, February 3rd, as you can see from the following chart:

Could my sensors have detected the global joy and happiness experienced by the peoples of the world at this blog’s anniversary?

Actually, no. Just as PEAR are really just seeing shapes in the clouds, the blip in visitors on February 3rd was actually due to the excellent plugs for my anniversary post Why did the chicken cross the road? by Pharyngula and others. Thanks to all who linked that day and made it such a success. As it was obviously so popular, I have started collecting victims contributors for my February 3rd 2007 post.

February 17, 2006

Reader Colleen sent me a link to this story about an Alabama man just arrested for the 1998 murder of his wife. The story was interesting because in 2000, another man, Rod Spraggins, claimed the murdered woman appeared to him in a dream saying her husband had committed the crime:

In 2000, Spraggins, a bail bondsman, stunned a crowd of 100 when he accused Waites of killing his wife and dared the man to sue him for slander if he was wrong.

Waites was not at the forum, never responded publicly to the accusation and never sued.

In an otherwordly turn to the saga Friday, Spraggins disclosed that he never had any evidence to make the accusation and that it was based entirely on Mrs. Waites' appearing to him in a series of dreams.

"She started appearing to me within the first weeks of her death," said Spraggins

The implication, reported without any skepticism, is that Sparaggins had a psychic experience. Of course, you don’t need to be psychic to know that the husband is always going to be a prime suspect in his wife’s murder. Actually I think this tells us more about Spraggins and his fantasies about Waites’ wife than it does about any supposed psychic experience. Spaggings may well have dreamed it. So what? It was on his mind; he was suspicious of the husband – why wouldn’t he dream something like that? The only remarkable thing about this story is that anyone would think it worthy of reporting.

Waites was investigated by the police after the murder – an investigation that turned up some other wrongdoing:

Waites was sentenced to six months in jail in 2002 after he pleaded guilty in an ethics case that was uncovered during the investigation into his wife's killing.

He was given a five-year split sentence, with six months to be served in the Chambers County Jail and the remainder on probation.

Psychic forces were not reported to be involved in that arrest though. And psychic forces were not at work in the murder arrest either, just routine police work:

Police Chief Ron Docimo would not comment on exactly what led to the arrest, saying only that it was a "culmination of years of following up on leads and tips."

So far there are no reports of Spraggins predicting the verdict in the upcoming trial. I have one prediction though – Spraggins won’t be called upon to testify.

January 26, 2006

That’s hardly a surprise to any skeptic who has ever debated a believer. But I am talking here just about ignoring facts when making political decisions. New research shows that people are adept at making political decisions without letting the facts get in the way, and they have the brain scans to prove it. A summary is reported in Live Science (all bold mine):

Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered.

…

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," … "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."

The subjects eventually rationalized what they had been told, reaching a biased conclusion based on their prior political preference. Their brains continued to be monitored:

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

This shouldn’t be too surprising to anyone who has debated politics either, but it is interesting to see which parts of the brain are being used (or not) and when. I find it especially interesting that the reward circuits in the brain light up when the data the person doesn’t like, has been rationalized away.

Of course, there is a general lesson here for critical thinkers: we should try to be aware of our own biases when being presented with political (and other) information, and should try to evaluate information honestly, even if it challenges our political views (whatever they may be). This is hard, of course. I try to do this but like everyone else I know that I engage in some of the rationalization activities described above at least some of the time. Half the battle, if you want to be a critical thinker, is to be aware of your own biases and of your own rationalization processes – or “the art of thinking about thinking with a view to improving it” as criticalthinking.org puts it. Something we should all try to do.

Of course, if you didn’t come by your opinions through reason you’re unlikely to change them through reason either, which is why woo beliefs are virtually immune to contradictory evidence. Perhaps with some woos, the “part of the brain normally engaged during reasoning” never gets much of a work-out.

December 05, 2005

Take a look at the SkepticWiki – a new online Encyclopedia of Science and Critical Thinking. It is an additional source for skeptical information that currently contains over 250 articles.

Being a “Wiki” means anyone can contribute. The only restriction is that you have to register as an author, to avoid the obvious risks of vandalism. As this project is relatively new, there are many subjects still to be covered, and possibly much to be added to existing subjects. New contributions are being actively sought so if you have something to contribute, and have the time, pile on in. All they request is that you start with the SkepticWiki for Beginners page to learn formats and etiquette. I would also recommend looking at the SkepticWiki Forum to see what is being discussed, and to post suggestions for any new subjects.

One area I thought needed a little amending was the astrology page, especially:

Falsifiability

The first objection to astrology, from a scientific point of view, is that it offers no theory which can make testable predictions, and thus is unfalsifiable

Regular readers will know astrology does make testable predictions. The thing is: astrology’s predictions fail when tested and so astrology has been falsified. If I had the time I’d pile in and amend it myself, but I’m spending too much time online with this blog as it is; if I started on the Wiki I’d never get outside! Anyway, if you’ve always wanted to write something skeptical on the web, but don’t want the work of a whole blog, here’s your chance.

October 21, 2005

Via Pharyngula
I learn of Jakob Nielsen’s critique of blog design. While I (like PZ Myers) don’t agree with most
of his points, I did think the idea to have a “Classic Hits” sidebar was a good
one. So I have placed links to some old
favorites in the right hand column, under “Classic Skeptico Posts”. I hope new
readers will find them interesting and that it gives them a flavor of what this
blog is about.

October 11, 2005

You would think the “Skeptico” email address would have given it away. A hint. A clue. A sign that “You’ll be wasting your time”. But no. Some bozo harvested my email and sent me one of those internet scams. You know: untold millions await - all I need to do is send them a few thousand dollars. Then a few more. Then (er, you get the idea.)

The email is from a Stuart Fielding (or Felding – he spells it both ways). Here is how it starts. (Spelling and punctuation as in original.)

Good Day,

I am Mr.Stuart Fielding,Senior Credit Officer of NATWEST BANK plc. Here is a 100% concealed and mutually profitable business proposal for you.

After the United States and Iraqi war, our client Hatem Kamil Abdul Fatah who was the deputy governor of Baghdad in Iraq and also business man made a numbered fixed deposit for 12 calendar months, with a value of Twenty Five million British Pounds only in my branch.

Upon maturity several notices were sent to him, even in the first quater of this year.Again another notification was sent and still no response came from him. We later found out that the Deputy Governor has been assasinated in Baghdad.

You know how the rest goes. Does anyone actually reply and send money to these people? I guess someone must otherwise they wouldn’t bother, right?

I think I’ll decline, though. You see, if I’m going to waste my money on a con-merchant it’s going to be with one of “the Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria”. For one, I received one of the earliest examples of this scam from them in 1992 – in the regular mail! (Yes children, this was in the days before email.) And for two, these guys just won an Ig Nobel Prize for literature. Fielding has a long way to go to catch up.

So I won’t be calling Mr.Stuart Fielding. Even on his “provate email”. Don’t let me stop you though. Just don’t send him any cash.

August 31, 2005

Fifty years ago the hydrogen bond angle in water was 108° and you rarely heard of anyone with cancer. Today, it's only 104° and, as a result, cancer is an epidemic!! By using our machine you can increase the bond angle to 114° and, unlike any other water, doctors can see an immediate change in the red blood cells under a microscope! It's truly amazing!!

Yes, it is truly amazing that they could print such nonsense. In reality:

The size and shape of the H2O molecule is governed entirely by the balance of forces between the ten nuclear charges and the ten electrons in the molecule. There is no evidence for the changes claimed.

(My bold.)

Still, why spoil a good story with scientific facts, when there is so much water cluster quackery to go round. And unverifiable and highly unlikely anecdotes such as these from Facts About H2O:

Herman has grown 18 foot corn, gigantic vegetables etc. and one major university, after turning a well pump off and pouring this amazing water down a well (pump off 4 hrs.) was AMAZED to find BACTERIA had gone from SKY HIGH to ZERO!

He grew a university?! Wow, that must be some special brand of bullshit he’s using there. And all by treating tap water with a device that merely:

…employs a 1500-watt heating element which boils water and then recondenses it, producing what is in effect distilled water.

(Snip)

The manufacturer and promoters of this device embellish the above mundane facts with variety of statements that are scientifically absurd and would likely be considered laughable by anyone who has recently passed a high-school chemistry course. Unfortunately, this group excludes most of the potential buyers of this device, who are not equipped to critically examine these claims and are thus more likely to be taken in by them.

To the tune of $1,500. Or $1,700 for one “with levels 15 times higher”.